I might ruffle a few feathers with this post because I'm not going to sugarcoat anything here. It's also a taboo topic to discuss, but one that needs far more attention than it is getting in the US. This is something I'm acutely aware of as I continue to try to incorporate more healthy habits each day into my children's lives. Some days, I succeed.
Our children are getting sicker and sicker. The more I read statistics that the CDC releases, the more I study case studies, the more I observe, the more passionately I feel about this topic.
I see overweight children decline to play tag at the park with other children. I assume it's because they don't want to always be "it" and cannot run as fast as other children. I watch them as they watch other children cross the monkeybars. They sit and look as if they wish they could participate. With their head down, eyes low, I see their confidence diminishing.
It breaks my heart.
Onset diabetes used to be called "Adult Onset Diabetes." The name has changed because of the population of people who are now getting it. It used to be a diagnosis made among a population of adults aged 40 & older. And, now, 1/3 of all children born in the US after the year 2000 will get onset diabetes sometime during their life. ONE THIRD OF ALL CHILDREN IN THE US WILL DEVELOP THIS DISEASE. Is this not a wake-up call to the US? A child of age 10 diagnosed with onset diabetes will lose 17-26 years of their life. And, yet, on any given day in America, 25% of the population visits a fast food restaurant....many of them children.
Onset diabetes is a travesty of a disease. The general symptoms go like this...it begins with frequent urination. There's an increase in appetite and thirst, blurred vision, and fatigue. In an post-pubescent male, often there is an inability or difficulty to have an erection. The blood begins to thicken. As an abnormally high blood sugar level is sustained over a long period of time, the individual will often have limbs of their body cut off. Some go blind. The diabetic is at serious risk for having a heart attack, stroke, and kidney failure. Think about it - if the blood is too thick because of the sugar in it, it becomes harder for the blood to travel smoothly and freely in the body. It would make sense that a foot wouldn't get the blood circulation it needs and begin to die. It is easy to understand how a heart attack or stroke (vessel blockage in the brain) could occur. Also, since the Body Mass Index of someone with onset diabetes is often high, there is just too much body for their little heart to continue to work. Some people have fainting spells because the amount of oxygen making it to the brain is not enough.
In most cases, onset diabetes is entirely avoidable.
The definition of addiction that I like the most is, "Continuous engagement in a behavior despite negative consequences." If someone continues to shovel crap into their system while their foot is being amputated, then they're probably addicted. They need help. They need self-love. They need to understand how to cope with their pain. They need to understand that to them, sugar is poison.
What hurts more than anything is when we do this to our children. If we don't teach them that food is not an emotional crutch, if we don't show them how to cook and eat healthy, if we're not there to make sure that their outdoor playtime is fun, then who will? How will they learn? We wouldn't let our child become an adult without teaching them how to read, or how to go to the bathroom and brush their teeth. Yet, so many of us in this country let our child become an adult without teaching them how to be healthy.
What are my suggestions?
1. Awareness, education, and conversations. If we don't start talking about this more candidly, if we don't start creating more awareness and education, then how will it get the attention it needs?
2. As parents, we need to be healthy ourselves...set an example. Allow diffusion to occur. When we feed our bodies healthy and get exercise, that naturally trickles down to our children. Before we can try to take care of others, we must learn how to take care of ourselves.
3. We must place it at the top of our priority list. Eating healthy can be expensive, time consuming, and a fight. If a child is used to eating pre-processed re-heated junk smothered in ketchup night after night, it might be hard to get them to make the switch. It's a process. It takes time. It takes determination. It takes investing in resources that teach us how to make healthy, nutritious, tasty meals.
4. Make outdoor play fun. We must throw the frisbee with our kids, push them on the swing, play tag. This creates an emotional attachment between parent and child that they will carry for the rest of their lives. If as a child, they go on family walks, then when they are an adult, going on a walk will remind them of you. It becomes more than a walk. It becomes a bond.
5. We must make eating healthy fun. We can let them help cook, we can show them different colors and textures, we can make it an experience.
6. Feed them healthy before going to birthday parties. Children are bombarded with crap at parties. If we feed them healthy foods before they go, they are often too full for the pizza or hotdogs. Our child needs a childhood, and eating healthy 100% of the time is not realistic. It's about balance, and learning that as a parent, we've got a few tricks in our bag. Filling them up with the good stuff before they're bombarded with the bad is one of those tricks. They don't feel deprived because they're not.
7. We must realize that most children cannot think straight or behave obediently if they've been sent to school with nothing but sugary starch in their belly. We need to make them healthy, balanced breakfasts. We should give them every tool that they need for success.
8. We have got to learn to change the way we shop. It sounds granola, but we must learn to buy healthy alternatives. We must buy brown rice & 100% whole wheat pasta. We must learn to use turkey instead of beef when possible. We need to keep a fruit basket always stocked & healthy nuts on hand for quick snacks. We must make sure our children have lots of water instead of Capri Sun. We need to learn to buy less of our food from the frozen aisle and more of it from the perimeter of the supermarket...or the farmers market.
9. We should allow children to eat fast food once or twice monthly. At some point, our child will discover McDonalds. If they've been deprived it their entire lives, then they might go overboard during their teenage years. We can do this strategically, though. We can take a happy meal to the park where we know that they will be more inclined to play on the monkeybars than to eat their burger. With a bite here and a bite there, food will not be the focus. This is very, very different from a sit-down healthy meal at the table as a family.
10. We must find other ways to reward than with food. We are all guilty of this, myself being a big culprit. Rewarding with food is easy, fast, and effective. But, there are other things that a child enjoys than ice cream for good grades. Setting up a rewards system in a child's head is something that can follow them into their adult years, and be very difficult for them to overcome. We must learn to become both aware and sensitive to how we reward our child.
Does this mean that there's no room for mac n cheese or frozen pizza in our child's life? Of course not. We live in the real world, not some June Cleaver portrayal. There are times when our child can & should eat "kid food". Deprivation is not the answer....balance is. But, balance in this case is not 50/50, its 90/10. Once, maybe twice, weekly, we can feed our children these foods. But, we need to be aware of what it does to our child. We must observe differences in behavior and concentration. We must try to not feed them these foods on school nights or as breakfasts. We should limit them to meals during times when we can handle the behavioral consequences that will result. And, they should not be the norm.
