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10 pounds down 32 pounds to go!

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

strict parents lead to fat kids

this article makes a lot of sense really. they say that the children of strict disciplinarians eat more due to stress. they also say that children who are forced to exercise will grow to hate exercising. if it was any more obvious it would bite us in our fat asses. and yet we still make children suffer gym class as a sorry excuse for physical education and group showers at the age of 13. they'll just never get it.

i dabbled in babysitting when i was a kid. i was horrible at it because a) i'm a pushover and b) i was the youngest child and i knew nothing about babies. one family i babysat for springs to mind with this article. they weren't particularly strict disciplinarians except for food. they kept their pantry locked and the kids had a schedule of what and when they could eat. they were all overweight. what i never understood about it was the locked pantry. it was completely full of junk food. and that's what the kids ate all the time. junk food, no matter how strict the feeding, does not healthy children make. if you have the sense to know your kids don't need to eat that food all the time, so much so you lock the pantry, you'd think you'd have the sense not to buy so much in the first place.

i can't imagine the issues having a locked pantry as a child would give an adult. my mom never bought junk food, whether that was for health or thrift i don't know, but we never had it in the house. it was never an issue and i don't feel like now i have to fill my cupboards with chips and twinkies. but i bet those kids i babysat have genuine trouble with food and boundaries now. how do you get over that?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

That sounds crazy, locking up the food. if anything you think that would cause the kids the hide food, and eat behind their parent's back.

my mom was the same, she never really bought junk. i think i was like in high school before i realized that honey nut cheerios was not a sugar cereal, but that's all my mom would buy. i'm the same in that i don't feel the need to stock up on lucky charms.

...jus me said...

My Mom never bought a lot of junk food either. We did have chips but they were not to munch til they are gone. They were for lunches or sometimes if we had ice cream, my mom had to have chips with her ice cream...lol. I do her grocery shopping now as she is 78 and it tires her out too much. Guess what is on her list every other week? You got it, Chips and ice cream!

Amy said...

it was extremely weird. i've never seen kids so obsessed by food. makes me feel lucky. and normal.