Is Your Child Overweight Interview

This book answers some truly difficult questions for all parents!

Childhood obesity continues to receive much media attention and this book has arisen from a need to put together a guide for parents that is both comprehensive and at the same time easily understandable.

Is Your Child Overweight? was written to help answer some serious and sensitive questions often asked about this essential topic:
Should you, as a parent, be worried about your child's weight?
How can you raise the issue of weight without offending or even frightening your child?
What's the best way to identify whether your child has a weight-problem and how do you get appropriate help?
What can you do on your own and when do you need to seek professional help?

Supported by the staff at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, internationally recognised as a leading centre of paediatric treatment.

Dr Matthew Sabintrained as a paediatrician in the UK and has specialised in thearea of growth, obesity and diabetes. With over 10 years of experience he has aPhD in the field and has presented novel clinical and research findings atscientific conferences and in well-respected medical journals.

Is Your Child Overweight?
Wilkinson Publishing
Author: Dr Matthew Sabin
Price: $9.95


Buy it now at Angus & Robertson

Is Your Child Overweight? Interview

What you need to know and what you can do!
This book answers some truly difficult questions for all parents!

Childhood obesity continues to receive much media attention and this book has arisen from a need to put together a guide for parents that is both comprehensive and at the same time easily understandable.

Is Your Child Overweight? was written to help answer some serious and sensitive questions often asked about this essential topic:
Should you, as a parent, be worried about your child's weight?
How can you raise the issue of weight without offending or even frightening your child?
What's the best way to identify whether your child has a weight-problem and how do you get appropriate help?
What can you do on your own and when do you need to seek professional help?

Supported by the staff at The Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, internationally recognised as a leading centre of paediatric treatment.

Dr Matthew Sabin trained as a paediatrician in the UK and has specialised in the area of growth, obesity and diabetes. With over 10 years of experience he has a PhD in the field and has presented novel clinical and research findings at scientific conferences and in well-respected medical journals.

Is Your Child Overweight?
Wilkinson Publishing
Author: Dr Matthew Sabin
Price: $9.95

Interview with Dr Matthew Sabin

Question: How does a parent know if their child is overweight?

Dr Matthew Sabin: It is really difficult, one of the first things that most health professionals and GPs do is to measure the Body Mass Index (BMI), to do this you take the child's weight (kg) divide by the height (cm) and divide by the height (cm) again and then plot it on a chart. A lot of health professionals can't measure the BMI, let alone parents.

What is a good indicator is that at any age a weight circumference should be about half of the height. To measure this you take a tape measure, around the mid point- around the line of the belly button and the points that you can feel are the top of the pelvis on the side of the stomach and the lower part of the ribs - if you go half way across there, with the tape measure - that should be about half of the height, regardless of if you are measuring a boy, a girl or a 5 year old or 15 year old.


Question: How can parents prevent obesity and encourage a healthy lifestyle for their children?

Dr Matthew Sabin: In terms of prevention, prevention needs to start early on. A lot of parents feel their child may be a little overweight and may be carrying a bit of puppy fat and in actual fact a lot do, but in the first couple of years; if the child is 4 or 5 years old and is carrying extra weight, it probably isn't puppy fat. We know that those children carrying weight at 4 and 5 years of age are more likely to go on and be obese or overweigh.

Prevention is the key and it is a question of trying to implement changes at a family level with the parents finding opportunists to increase the level of physical activity for the whole family, shopping healthier and making sure there is healthier foods in the cupboards. Parent may need to find more time, when they go shopping, to think about healthy alternatives; these are lifestyle changes that a small child, wouldn't notice. The best results come from those families where the whole family makes a preventative change.


Question: What tips do you have to parents who understand they need to confront their child about their weight?

Dr Matthew Sabin: In a young child they don't need to discuss it with them, they need to discuss it between themselves as parents and say "let's change things and find opportunities for physical activity and we won't have take away as often".

In an adolescent it is really a question of trying to raise it. Many parents find they are scared of raising the topic because it can turn into a negative issue, quite quickly. Parents are concerned that the child might think they're on their back and that they may exacerbate depression or eating disorders. In actual fact a very sensitive and gentle talk with most adolescents will get them to open up to the fact that they are beginning to get a bit concerned about their weight and they probably haven't thought about the health consequences but they probably have thought about the other issues involved in being overweight, such as: potential bullying and not being about to buy the clothes they want to buy. It is a question of trying to do it on the adolescences terms, in terms of finding ways that they can work with the child to increase levels of physical activity without making that child feel they are being singled out for treatment. A way to combat this is with family change or parents helping their adolescences by perhaps going out swimming or finding opportunities for a fun based activity.

A lot of overweight problems come down to eating regular meals and eating breakfast. A lot of adolescences find it really difficult to eat breakfast and we have children and adolescences who simply loose weight just from having breakfast, everyday, because it really changes your metabolism. A lot of adolescences say they don't have time or feel sick if they eat breakfast and that is an indication that their body is trying to make fat when it should be breaking down fat; by eating you re-train the body.


Question: Why did you think it was important to write this book?

Dr Matthew Sabin: I have been involved in looking after overweight and obese children through a specialist clinic for about ten years, initially in the UK and now in Australia. We see about 200 new patients, a year, which is by far in a way the biggest tertiary hospital specialist clinic, in the country. We do about 1,000 reviews, a year, as well, we provide on going care for the children. In actual fact we get really good results from the services we provide, we get 80% that have improvement in body composition and about a third gets improvement where they get real health benefits.

I think a lot of families feel that by the time they walk through the doors they are really at their wits end and don't know what to do. Through simple advice, education and support they are able to change things around. We have great success stories such as kids who might have been 135-140kg at the age of 14 who have come back down to about 85-90kg- there is still a problem but by far is not the biggest problem they could have had if they had continued to put on fat.

A lot of families feel very desperate and don't know how to recognise it and what to do about it. What I realised is that with the 200 children a year even in Victoria alone there was probably, if you look at the senses data, about 33,000 overweight and obese children. What I realised is that I needed to put something in a book, so people could go out and almost help themselves so they can get going in the right direction; hopefully that is what this book, will do.

I have no doubt that parents and older children who work through the book will find it an easy way to start making positive changes.


Interview by Brooke Hunter