Be confident with your kids

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-07-08 11:54

Many parents don't have enough self-confidence to implement and enforce changes in their child's behavior that will reduce the child's risk of obesity, researchers from Harvard Medical School in Boston find.

However, the researchers also find that having the child's doctor or nurse inquire about the parents' confidence level can actually help to increase it.

Theorizing that parents with higher self-confidence would be more likely to take on the challenge of changing a child's unhealthy behavior, Dr Elsie Taveras and colleagues asked 446 parents of overweight children how confident they felt about making the following changes: limiting television viewing, removing TVs from children's bedrooms, cutting back on fast food, reducing intake of sugary drinks, increasing physical activity, and improving the family's overall eating habits.

In the latest issue of Pediatrics, Taveras and colleagues report that the average score on the parent confidence survey was 13 (the lowest possible score was 0 and the highest possible score was 24). Overall, parents were least confident in their ability to remove a TV from their child's room, to limit TV watching, and to change the family's eating patterns.