Is an unhappy child a future obese adult?

There are some important limitations to an interesting study about this issue, noted by the researchers.

1.Reliance on self-report of BMI at age 30. (BMI, body mass index, is a measurement for obesity.)

Self-reports are the weakest kind of information, especially decades after events.

2.”A strength of the study — including all people born in England and Wales during a single week — was also a weakness in that “it is inevitably limited in its capacity to assess the effect of sociocultural changes occurring between cohorts born in different years.”"

Many things happen on the way to becoming an adult. Some generations, as a whole, are lucky or unlucky. Those who survived the 1918 Pandemic struggled, with so many young adults dead. While there are differing opinions about baby boomers, the 1946-1954 generation, its members did grow up in a child-focused generation.

This takes us to how effective a child perceives himself or herself to be in life.

One issue in this study is labeled “an external locus of control.” Briefly, Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh would be the ideal representative. “Oh, bother,” Eeyore laments, head drooping. Eeyore knows it is not worth trying because it will never work out. That is what kids who think this way feel, too. “Oh, bother.” “Why try?”

But there are more influences at work than the child’s mindset. What messages are the child and peers getting about their prospects? Those, too, shape them. That is why researchers mention socio-cultural influences.

What Can You Do?

- If you are not sure about your child’s general mood, compared to others in his or her age group, ask the child’s doctor for some perspective. Is this child sad often? Is there a known cause? If so, what can be done to help your child?

- Where does your child fit in the “external locus of control” issue? Low-self esteem is not repaired by reassurance the child senses he or she did not earn, but parents, with the doctor’s help, can come up with ways to help a child focus on the connection between the child’s actions and direct outcomes, good or bad. Sure, sometimes things don’t work out. But it is hard to believe nothing does and those are the children at risk: the ones who believe they have no ability to influence the events in their lives at least more often than not.

- Parents should not hesitate to raise these questions with doctors if the child seems sad or too quiet or frankly anxious. It does not mean that you are “bad parents” but observant ones.

Medpage Today

“Sad youngsters are more likely to grow up to be fat adults, particularly if the unhappy child is a girl, according to a British study of more than 6,500 adults who were born in 1970.Measurable emotional problems, including low self-esteem and “an external locus of control” at age 10 were significant predictors of weight gain in adulthood (P<0.001), wrote Andrew Ternouth, PhD, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College in London.

“That finding emerged from an analysis of data from the 1970 Birth Cohort Study published online today in the open access journal BMC Medicine.

“That study involves a sample of people born in England and Wales during one week in April 1970. The total cohort includes 16,496 individuals; the current analysis was based on more than 6,500 for whom complete data from an assessment done at age 10 were available.”

Source: Medpage Today,

Citation:Ternouth A et al “Childhood emotional problems and self-perceptions predict weight gain in a longitudinal regression model” BMC Med 2009.