But there are ways to help an overweight child change the way he feels about himself. It's rare to open the comics in the newspaper and not see a joke about someone who's overweight. Dr. Sandra Hassink is Director of the Pediatric Weight Management Clinic at du Pont Hospital for Children. This is extraordinarily painful to these children and can be very devastating. Dr. Hassink suggests that a child's obesity should be the entire families concern.
Families have to take a look.
Caretakers have to take a look at what nutritional environment and what activity environment their children are in, and begin to make that change in a supportive loving way. Dr. Hassink warns that making family wide dramatic changes are difficult to sustain. However, small changes can be meaningful. The child, remember, doesn't do food shopping, the child doesn't do food preparing and the child watches what you do as a parent. If all you did was encourage water drinking between meals, take a family walk, change some of your tried and true recipes to lower fat recipes.