The Role of Parental Misperception of Child's Body Weight in Childhood Obesity

• The study surveyed over 14,000 parents over a 4-year period on their family's overall health and nutrition.
• The majority of parents misperceive their child's weight category when the child is obese.
• The greatest predictor for having an obese child was having a parent that misperceived their child's weight status.
• The second greatest predictor for having an obese child was having at least one parent that was obese.
• Children in the lower grade levels (K-3) were more likely to be obese.

PurposeTo investigate the accuracy of parental perceptions of their child's weight status and also the relationship between parental perceptions and the prevalence of childhood obesity in Mississippi.Design and MethodsData from multi-year surveys (2009–2012) with random samples of public school parents (N = 14,808). Descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression were conducted with quantitative data to examine the relationship between parental perception and childhood obesity.ResultsMore than 2 out of 5 parents misperceived the weight status of their child (k-12). The greatest difference occurred with kindergartners, 83.9% of parents categorized them as “healthy", when only 28.3% actually were. Parents who misperceived their child's weight were almost 12 times more likely of having an obese child.ConclusionsOnly half of the children in this study had a healthy weight (54.5%). Health care providers, nutritionists, social workers, teachers, and school health councils could play an important role in educating parents and children on how to recognize an unhealthy weight.Practice ImplicationsThe strongest predictor of childhood obesity was parental misperception of their child's weight status.