Childhood Undesirable Behaviors that Contribute to Childhood Obesity - Essay Example

"Childhood Undesirable Behaviors that Contribute to Childhood Obesity" is an outstanding example of a paper on child development.
Children become overweight and even obese due to various reasons, most of which are behavioral. Some of the causes of childhood obesity include genetic factors, unhealthy eating conditions, lack of physical activity, and sometimes it can be because of a combination of these factors (CDC, 2013). There is technological advancement impact that puts children to be at risk of becoming obese. We can, therefore, see clearly that, apart from genetic factors, childhood obesity is purely caused by behavioral contributions. These are considered as those behaviors that lead to poor feeding habits, as well as inactivity in children. This paper is aimed at highlighting each of these undesirable behaviors in children that contribute to childhood obesity and replace them with desirable behaviors that will promote healthy living.

To begin with, children have a tendency to poor eating habits where they like those yummy foodstuffs like pizza that contain a lot of calories. One will find that children will take these foodstuffs that have a lot of calories, and in large quantities. It only shows that the children are taking up too many calories than is required or recommended to be taken by the body. This goes a long way to making them overweight, which finally results in childhood obesity. To change this situation, children need proper regulation of what they need to take in as far as healthy foodstuff is concerned and in proper amounts. In this way, we will not have children suffering from such a disorder.

Secondly, there is a tendency for reduced activity in children of the current generation. This can be seen as most elementary schools in the USA and other countries across the world, have reduced or removed physical activity from the school curriculum. The physical activity used to be a daily routine in elementary schools. However, some schools have done away with it, and that has made our children live their lives without carrying out enough activity. I would urge the government to review this policy and reinstate physical activity as a daily thing in our schools. Children also need to reduce the amount they take in activities that reduce their physical activity. Such activities include children spending much of their time on video games and watching television among others. Parents should, therefore, help their children to regulate the time they spend on such activities and translate it to the time they use in running in the field or play football.

The government and the media can also help in screening the various food adverts that are put on the television during commercials. Some of these adverts promote such bad eating habits in children as they make the children want to eat such foodstuffs even more. I would, therefore, urge that such commercials to be removed from our televisions and only aired during such times when the children are probably not watching.

In a nutshell, children are most prone to obesity due to their behavioral characteristics. Apart from this disease being brought about by genetic factors, it is contributed to a larger extent by the behavioral factors in children. Some of these include poor feeding habits and lack of enough physical activity. All these can be avoided through the use of proper guidelines. The government, the parents, the media, and the children themselves should be at the forefront to implement proper behaviors that promote healthy living without obesity in children.