Posted Jan 4, 2012
Childhood obesity is a growing issue in this country (pun not intended). So any new study that comes out about why kids become obese is gobbled up by parents and media.
Is teen obesity linked to mother-toddler relationship?
A study found that a toddler’s relationship with the mother could have an effect on the child’s weight as a teen.
I count myself among both of those, so of course I had to read up on a recent study done at Ohio State University that says how a mother interacts with her toddler could lead to weight issues more than a decade later.
The research, which included 977 kids, looked at how the moms played with the kids as toddlers. They analyzed and assessed the child’s relationship to mom, looking at how tuned in the mom was to the kid’s emotions and how warm her response was when dealing with the child. They also looked at how confident the toddler was to explore freely during play, as this is a measure of what they called “attachment security.”
They determined that 25 percent of the toddlers had a poor-quality relationship with the mother. (That stat alone was startling to me, and made me think about how I interact with my own toddler.) Just under a quarter, 22 percent, had a perfect score.
Once the kids were 15, researchers checked back in and found that 26 percent of those kids who fell into the poor-quality relationship category were obese. This is twice as many as those without relationship issues.
Is this one more thing to blame on mom?
Of course many factors go into why kids become obese, poor diet being chief among them. The study also shows the gap became smaller when factors like household income and maternal education were thrown into the mix.
But what is it about the relationship at that time in a child’s life that could be a factor? Stress, apparently.
I like to think that my kid could not possibly have stress. What could be stressful about being a toddler? It’s all playing, sleeping and pooping at that age, right?
Plus learning and growing and figuring out how to be independent and trying to communicate with less-than-perfect verbal skills. So the kid really is working hard at his little job of becoming a real person.
An article about a mother-toddler link to obesity on CNN goes on to say:
Investigators did say instead of just blaming the mother for her child’s obesity, efforts should be made to improve strategies to improve mother-child relationships earlier in a youngster’s life, and not just focus on the child’s eating habits or exercise.
So yes, diet is key. But there needs to be thinking beyond the dinner table and snack time.