Parents Not Recognizing Children's Weight Issues

Over 40 percent of parents of both underweight and overweight children are misguided in their belief that their children are within the average weight range. In what is becoming a common problem—the misconception about a child's real weight—parents allow unhealthy habits to continue, which can lead to life-long issues.
Research conducted at the University of Melbourne in Australia found that 4 in 10 parents mis-identified their child's body size, and that various methods in assessing the weight of children, such as the Body Mass Index (BMI) or waist circumference (WC), results in different standards for recognizing children as being either overweight or underweight. With the use of BMI, which estimates the percentage of body fat by comparing a person’s height and weight in a statistical formula, more children were categorized as being overweight than when using the WC method, which generally deems a waistline of 18.5 to 24.9 inches as normal.
Doctoral researcher Dr. Pene Schmidt conducted the study which also showed that children not falling within the average weight range are more likely to over or underestimate their body size and that even a few parents believe their underweight children are overweight or that their overweight children are underweight. Dr. Schmidt acknowledges that the results of the research suggest a need to revamp the methods by which the weight of children is classified and offer better information to parents about appropriate weight at both ends of the tape measure. She stated, “Parents are unlikely to take the necessary preventative actions if the perception of their child’s weight, whether underweight or overweight, is incorrect.”
The study was conducted in the University of Melbourne’s School of Behavioral Science and data used for the analysis came from a survey of over 2,100 children, ages 4 to 12, as well as their parents. Previous research has only examined the perceptions of parents of overweight children whereas Dr. Schmidt’s study is the first to examine parental perceptions of underweight children as well when using both BMI and WC.
The outcome was that 43 percent of parents of underweight children considered their children to be an average weight and that 49 percent of parents of overweight children believed their children to be an average weight. Over 80 percent of parents were correct in identifying average weight children as being average weight. Additionally, 1.4 percent of parents felt that their underweight children were overweight and 2.5 percent correctly identified their overweight children as overweight.
Interestingly, parents were found to be more likely to report their sons as underweight and their daughters as overweight. Parents of girls were less likely to accurately identify that their child was underweight while parents of boys were less likely to accurately identify their child as being overweight. In fact, only 4 out of 10 parents of underweight girls and half of underweight boys correctly assessed their weight. Double the number of parents were concerned about their overweight children compared to those concerned about underweight children.
Dr. Schmidt says the study showed that parents and children were both struggling to determine whether or not they were the correct weight. The results of the analysis have concluded that there is need for more research to determine how to best define children’s weight status as well as how to communicate the information to children and parents.