The CDC report encourages quality, daily physical education classes as well as after-school programs to add activities to daily life. Parents should look at the total amount of time a child spends on television or video games. Studies consistently show that as television time increases, so does the tendency for overweight. One study found that children who watched more than five hours of TV a day had a five-times greater chance of being overweight than those who watched two hours or less. The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages parents to take control and limit their children's television to no more than one to two hours a day.
Parents also play an important role as they demonstrate a healthy activity level in their own lives.
Instead of sending their kids out to play, they can take them out and play together. If parent-child leisure activity revolves around eating and watching entertainment or sports events, something needs to change. Parents can involve kids in planning family hikes, bike rides, sports, or outings to the park. Most studies tend to show that the amount of physical activity has a greater effect on a child's weight than nutrition. But surely it doesn't help if children come home and eat bags of snack foods low in nutrition and high in calories.