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Managing Your Child's Weight

Tips to Help Your Pre-Teen Feel Good About Who They Are

Apr 24, 2007

Managing Your Child's Weight, Trinity Tweens

Tweens can become overly concerned with how they should look for a variety of reasons. Being overweight or too thin both can cause unwanted problems.

Most tweens tend to put a lot of emphasis on the way they look and how others see them both physically and socially. All too often they care more about what their peers think of them, than doing what they know is right. This philosophy is no different when it comes to the issue of weight management. If a child is teased for being overweight, this obviously lowers his self-esteem. It can even cause a child this young to turn to self-inflicted weight loss measures such as bulimia and anorexia. Even when a girl has a healthy weight for her age and height, it only takes one comment from a peer to make her reevaluate herself and resort to drastic measures of weight loss.

Here are some tips for helping your tween develop a safe and acceptable attitude toward weight management. Part of being a caring and loving parent is recognizing when there is a weight problem and doing something about it.

If your child is overweight:

Schedule an appointment with your family doctor. He can provide facts and figures that can help your child see where he needs to be and offer a reasonable plan for weight loss.
Encourage exercise. Getting involved with recreational sports is a great way to get physically fit. If your child does not have athletic abilities, try getting the whole family involved in a walking program or some type of physical activity that you can do together. He will feel more confident if others are participating in some means of activity with him.
Help your child set goals for losing weight. Losing about one pound per week is a realistic goal. Your child can achieve this through less snacking, adding more fruits and vegetables to his diet, and cutting back on portions and servings. Children do require more calories than adults, as they burn more in a day, so you may want to check with your family doctor about how many calories your child should be taking in per day.

If your pre-teen is within range, but still struggling with weight loss:

Talk about the media and advertising campaigns. Models generally appear very thin and appeal to physical attraction. Let your child know that some celebrities take drastic measures to look as thin as they do, and may be depriving themselves of essential nutritional requirements.
Be a role model for your child. When the whole family starts living a healthier lifestyle, your child will see that nutrition is important to everyone and must have some real value.
Emphasize the areas in your child's life where she is successful. Give her abundant praise for achieving goals, making good grades, and doing well on a sports team. Let her see that weight is not everything, and she has other traits to be excited about.

If you suspect that your child is too thin, it is important to employ the help of a health care professional as soon as possible. Your child may resist wanting the help, but this is a serious situation, and you have to be level-headed about making decisions on behalf of your child's health.

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The copyright of the article Managing Your Child's Weight in Parenting Tweens is owned by Denise Oliveri. Permission to republish Managing Your Child's Weight in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.