April Is National Child Abuse Prevention Month - 30 Tips and Facts in 30 Days

With certainty, fattening kids up by making them overweight/obese is child abuse.

Nutritional child abuse is the most common form of child abuse of which we are aware. About one-third of all kids are overweight or obese. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month in the USA. To help these children, who are arguably the most abused on earth, Fitness Watch will offer 30 tips and facts – one for each day in April – directed at saving the children. Even if you are not from the USA, these facts and tips can help you and your children, too.

Today’s Tip – help your children find friends that support fitness.

You may recall a while back there was a lot of talk about fat being contagious.

This is nonsense. It is simply an example of how people with similar interests tend to hang out and reinforce their interests.

Just as jocks tend to hang with jocks and nerds with nerds, so, too, do overweight/obese people tend to hang with each other.

As a parent, it is important that you are aware of with whom your kids hang out.

Just as you would hopefully not want your kids to congregate with drug abusers, and would discourage them from hanging out with them, so, too, should you discourage your kids from hanging out with Calorie abusers.

Screen your children’s friends. Get to know who they are and how they take care of themselves (or, if you prefer, how their parents take care of them).

Children who are not taught good personal habits, like weight control, will likely be negative influences on your kids. Remember, overweight/obese children are likely to have low self-esteem, illnesses, academic problems, poorer social skills and more negatives.

And if you are inclined to say to yourself, “Well, they can be nice people, these overweight/obese kids my child knows,” you should realize that is not the point.

First, normal weight kids can also be nice, but, second, and more important, it is not about the other kids. It is about your child and your responsibility to help them have the best life possible for them. Part of that is guiding them to friends who offer more good to them.

Also, if you are of the mindset that it is nice of your kid to befriend the “unfortunate” overweight/obese child, recognize that it is nice to donate to a charity, but you do not have to live as the recipients.

Protecting your children and helping others are two separate things. You can do both and it does not have to be at the expense of one over the other.