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Child Overweight in the Community
To view the pdf of the Satter Feeding Dynamics Approach to Child Overweight in the Community in PDF format click here.
Defining the problem as overweight and the solution as weight loss presents a problem that can’t be solved. Weight reduction efforts are not successful, even the most-energetic, highest-funded, most-carefully constructed ones. Nonetheless, parents, health professionals, teachers, child nutrition programs, mental health professionals and social service agencies have been assigned the impossible task of slimming children down. On the other hand, the problem of child overweight can be solved if we remember that the overweight child is first and foremost a child. The primary tasks are parenting and feeding that child, not keeping or getting him thin.
Child overweight can be prevented from birth and throughout the growing-up years by feeding and parenting well to support the child’s own normal growth and development.
- Parents can learn recommended feeding practice, and from birth support their child in growing and developing well.
- Health professionals can teach recommended feeding practice to every parent, whether their child is large or small.
- Teachers can regard a child’s size and shape as a given, just like intellect and learning style, and concentrate on what they do best–helping the child to make the most of what nature has provided.
- Child nutrition programs can focus on providing for the child, supporting nutritional status and sustaining normal growth and development.
- Policy-makers can approach child overweight as a wellness issue, rather than one of illness. Policies can support normal growth and development rather than emphasizing the diagnosis and treatment of children arbitrarily defines as being overweight.
- Legislators can help parents provide for their children by working toward universal access to health care, funding child nutrition programs and Head Start, supporting minimum wage adequate to provide for a family, and funding subsidies for quality child care.
© 2005 Ellyn Satter. For more information, see Ellyn Satter’s Your Child’s Weight; Helping Without Harming, Kelcy Press, Madison, WI. 2005. For references and further information, see www.ellynsatter.com
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Ellyn Satter Associates
4226 Mandan Crescent, Madison, WI 53711
Phone: 608-271-7976 | Toll-free 800-808-7976 | Fax: 866-724-1631
Email: info@ellynsatter.com
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