Parental perception and child's nutritional status

Abstract

Childhood obesity is a health hazard increasing worldwide. Preschool period which is under supervision of parents is a critical period to detect overweight and take precautions. We studied the factors affecting parental estimation of their preschool child's weight. Three hundred sixty seven mothers completed questionnaires consisting of child's and parents' anthropometric measurements, parents' assessment of their child's and their own weight status, and general information about their lifestyle. Mothers also chose their wish for current and future body image of their child from child drawings representing percentiles. Child body mass index-for-age z score (BAZ) was related to birth weight and child's appetite. BAZ was not related to child's gender, presence of chronic disease, family pattern, parental age, education or income. 43.1 % of mothers correctly assessed child's BAZ verbally. Maternal verbal estimation was correlated with maternal visual estimation, paternal verbal estimation and child's BAZ. Mothers' wish for future figure of the child was not related to child's BAZ, but showed correlation with mothers' wish for current figure of the child. Mother's correct perception of her child's weight was found to be high, consistent with her spouse and related to child's BAZ.

A new monitoring system for nutritional status assessment in children at home

“…(a) boys: −22.705 + 0.178 × WC − 0.664 × HC + 1.514 × WH 3 ; (b) girls: −14.354 + 0,206 × WC-0,869 × HC + 0.96 × WH 3 , where WC: waist circumference (cm), HC: hand circumference (cm), WH 3 : weight/height 3 ratio (kg/m 3 ). If the result equals or is smaller than 0, the estimated nutritional status is normal, if it is bigger than 0, the nutritional status is overfat/obese.…”

“…The parental involvement in children's nutritional status assessment could sufficiently help the family-based lifestyle intervention activities. Since parents usually fail to evaluate their child's nutritional status, an easy-touse and sufficiently accurate method of children's nutritional status assessment could help their evaluation 3 .…”

Acordo entre o peso corporal, percepção materna e estado de peso em crianças

“…Another aspect addressed demonstrates that the majority of mothers, regardless of the sex of their children, tend to underestimate the body weight of their children, especially as their body weight status increases. Previous studies show that parents tend not to recognize excess weight in their children (Almoosawi et al, 2016;Yalçin, Serdaroglu, & Ince, 2016) being that, in most cases, they underestimate their body size. This difficulty in recognizing the real size of their children's bodies can be attributed to several factors, such as the level of education (Yalçin et al, 2016), maternal dissatisfaction with their own bodies (Thomas & De Caro, 2018) idealization of aesthetic standards (Heidelberger & Smith, 2016) influence of the media (Heidelberger & Smith, 2016), maternal eating behaviors (Almoosawi et al, 2016), and maternal body weight (Yalçin et al, 2016), among others.…”

Evaluation of The Relationship Between Child's Anthropometric Measurements and Maternal Perception

“…( 16) yaptığı bir çalışmada, bu oranın %45 olarak, yine benzer şekilde Yalçın ve ark. (18) yaptığı çalışmada, söz konusu oranın %43 olarak saptandığı görülmektedir. Çalışmamızın genelinde annelerin %70'inin eğitim seviyesinin düşük olması nedeniyle, annelerin çocuklarının vücut ağırlığı konusundaki doğru ve yanlış algıları ile eğitim düzeyleri arasında anlamlı fark saptanmamıştır.…”