The paper looks at the concept of obesity in children and how this affects their early childhood. Central to the paper are the likely causes o obesity in children, the effects it has in terms of the learning and how the child socializes with others and how this menace can be controlled in the future.
Sociocultural Issue in Early Childhood
The problem of childhood obesity has gone up considerably in recent years. A percentage of between 16 and 33 of children are obese today and this percentage is constantly on the rise. Obesity is among the easiest medical conditions to be recognized especially among children .despite this it is also termed as the most difficult disease to treat due to the complications that come with it. Unhealthy gaining of weight as a result of poor diets and lack of doing exercises has been responsible for over 300,000 deaths every year. Children who are obese are more likely to become obese adults unless they make changes in their eating habits and their lifestyles generally. Children and obesity is therefore a very important topic to be discussed. This is because once this topic is fully looked into and people can be sensitized on how to avoid obesity then there will be fewer children with obesity. This means that this social cultural issue will have been dealt with once and for all. Deaths that are related to obesity in children will also be reduced since parents and children will have been given guidance on proper lifestyles they should live in order to prevent obesity. Therefore as we have seen the trends of the rising number of obese children it is important to make sure that these numbers do not go up rather they should go down.
Children and obesity is a very wide and important topic in social cultural issues in Early development in children.it involves looking at the causes or predisposing factors to obesity in children as well as looking at how one can prevent themselves from being obese.it also inv9olves looking at some of the effects that obese has on children and therefore clearly state the reasons as to why it is important to combat this menace in society.
When it comes to child development there are various theories that can be used to describe or explain some of the behaviors that children develop. When it comes to the development of obesity it can be linked to the theory of social learning. Social learning theory puts emphasis on the roles of observation and imitation. Individuals normally develop new patterns of behavior through observing other people and modeling their behavior. There is a lot of fuss among children on lifestyles. Virtually all children now copy each other in terms of their lifestyle it has become acceptable among children to eat a lot of junk as opposed to healthy eating. This is usually the main cause of obesity. Therefore through learning theories the children often develop the behavior of eating unhealthy foods and not exercising from their peers and friends.it is therefore acceptable among peer groups to eat unhealthy foods as compared to eating healthy foods (American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry,2011).
Causes of obesity are usually complex including biological, genetic, cultural and behavioral factors. Obesity usually occurs when a person eats more calories as compared to the level which the body is able to burn up. If a parent is obese then there is a50% chance of a child in that family becoming obese. However in cases where both parents are obese then the likelihood of a child in the family becoming obese is 80%.even though there are some medical disorders which can lead to development of obese less than 1% of the cases of obesity is normally caused by the physical problems. There are various factors that can be related to childhood obesity and they include;
Food choices; children who choose high fat and sugary foods are more likely to develop obesity as compared to those who eat healthy foods.
Lack of physical activities; physical activities are important in order to burn the extra calories that children have taken up. Children who are termed as couch potato kids are more; likely to develop obesity are compared to those who are active.
Spending a lot of time on pursuits that are sedentary; most of the children nowadays spend a lot of their time watching television, using computers and other electronic games.it means that pastimes are slowly being replaces by sedentary games.
Overweight parents; family pattern greatly influence on whether a child will maintain healthy weight. Parents who are overweight are least concerned if their children become overweight or not.
Genetics; there are some rare gene disorders that can lead to severe early childhood obesity.in other people there are specific genes that act together increasing the probability of a child developing obesity. Incase there is tendency in the family of development of obesity then parents are supposed to be keen on ensuring that their children are on healthy meals (State government of Victoria, 2013).
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