Most parents just feel helpless. They want the best for their kids, but in spite of everything we know about nutrition and exercise, most parents hope for the best and do little about their overweight kids.
My daughter Pari was small at birth, but quickly became a heavy baby. By the age of two, our pediatrician began intimating that Pari was putting on more weight than she needed. Until kindergarten, kids from our neighborhood, her day care or nursery school accepted Pari just as she was, and her size never came up. But when she started school, there was a whole new set of kids, and some would make comments about Paris size.
Some were innocent observations; some comments were just down right mean. In first grade she was invited to a slumber party of a new friend, and told me she would be uncomfortable changing in front of the other girls because she was fat. This was a shocking moment for me, because now I understood that she felt badly about herself, that she had been giving thought to her size, and comparing herself to other children. What could I do? In my case, there were few resources, but that has changed.
As the author of Seven Steps to Get Your...