Why Johnny Can’t Learn, Reason #442: He’s Obese

(CC) Orin Zebest/Flickr

Also: Why Johnny’s Parents Let Him Get That Way

The only way to avoid coming across a newspaper or magazine article declaring that children in 137 countries including Upper Volta now score better than American school kids in reading or math or just about anything other than computer games, is to be blind. One reason there are so many such articles is that there is an abundance of contributing factors to write about: inadequate funding, incompetent teachers, stifling bureaucracies, indifferent or even nonexistent parents, plenty more.

And now, some pediatric health specialists would add another contributor: childhood obesity. If they’re right, the fact that one out of every three kids in America is obese or overweight might help explain some of our national academic underachievement. Some serious research on the subject is needed, since the evidence we currently have — that obese kids tend to score more poorly on standardized tests — doesn’t tell us just what the causal connections might be.

But there’s plenty of anecdotal support for the obesity-impedes-education premise from teachers and health officials. Some of this is obvious: fat kids are the low-hanging fruit of youthful bullying, and often come to hate school and everything associated with it, including learning, as a result. Or they stop coming to school at all. Even in the absence of bullying, there’s always gym and/or P.E., with the numerous attendant opportunities for humiliation and failure.

Then there are the less obvious challenges fat kids may face. Such as having to urinate frequently due to belly fat pressing on their bladders. Or needing breaks from class to eat special snacks or take medication to treat their obesity-caused diabetes. Or dozing off in class because of a nightly, obesity-caused sleep disorder. Or taking more illness-related absences from school due to weight-related health problems. Or simply being too fat, or having joints that are too sore, to climb a flight of stairs. And let’s not forget the matter of whether the child can fit comfortably behind a standard-issue school desk.

In some cases, and perhaps a lot, when the parent asks, “Why have you let my child fall behind,” the answer could very well be the counter query, “Why have you let your child become too fat to keep up?”

That is a question deserving of a major article in its own right, and I might tackle it if not for the fact that I have no children, fat or otherwise, and therefore seem fundamentally unqualified to speak to the question. But according to persons who have some experience in the field, parents generally allow their kids to become overweight for one or more of the following reasons.

• They don’t even recognize that their children are fat. And given the childhood obesity rates, their kids may not look fat next to some of their friends. In any case, studies show that 75 percent of parents tend to underestimate fat children’s weight. And the percentage isn’t much higher among the health professionals who should be alerting the parents.
• They recognize that their kids are overweight, but don’t have the culinary knowledge or experience, or the kitchen savvy, or the money, or the time required, to provide their kids with nutritious, non-fattening home-made meals. Sometimes these are explanations and sometimes they are merely excuses, but either way the kids wind up eating calorie-rich frozen or packaged food or fast food and gaining weight.
• They know their kids are overweight, but fear that confronting them on the issue would damage their self-esteem or alienate them or start a fight, especially if the parents themselves are overweight, and thus in a poor position to make judgments.
• Kids are the world’s experts at getting what they want, food included, and at making things unpleasant for others when they don’t get what they want, and so often it’s just easier on everybody to throw in the towel and let the dip chips fall where they may. Sometimes fattening food is the only thing that they and the kids still enjoy together; sometimes it’s the only thing that makes the child happy. Sometimes it’s just impossible to say no. Sometimes “sometimes” becomes most of the time.

There are, it seems, a whole host of reasons for a parent’s allowing his or her children to become fat. Whether any of them are adequate is another matter, and one that only other parents are qualified to judge, which, as noted above, lets me off the hook. I don’t envy your situation, mom and dad.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

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Why Johnny Can’t Learn, Reason #442: He’s Obese is a post from: CalorieLab - Health News & Information Blog

Source: http://calorielab.com/news/2012/11/13/why-johnny-cant-learn-reason-442-hes-obese/

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