Not only was the 16-year-old boy 60 pounds overweight, but a blood test showed he might have fatty liver disease. At last, his mother took him to a pediatric weight management clinic in New Haven. But she did not at all like the dietitian’s advice.
“I can’t believe you’re telling me I can’t buy Chips Ahoy! cookies,” said the mother, herself a nurse.
This was hardly the first time that Mary Savoye, the exasperated dietitian who recalled this exchange, had counseled parents who seem unable to acknowledge the harsh truth about their child’s weight.
“Often they don’t want to accept it because change means a lot of work for everyone, including themselves,” Ms. Savoye said.
Despite widespread publicity about the obesity epidemic, parents increasingly seem to be turning a blind eye as their children put on pounds. In a recent study in Childhood Obesity, more than three-quarters of parents of pre-school-age obese sons and nearly 70 percent of parents of obese daughters described their children as “about the right weight.”
[For more of this story, written by Jan Hoffman, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06...?ref=health&_r=0]
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