Modern lifestyles have seen many of our kids growing up with obesity. This is a situation which is not only bad because of the health problems that our children will suffer in the future; it can also have devastating psychological effects on overweight children.

The problem with weight issues are that they growing at an alarming rate, regardless of the health guidelines regularly provided by health institutions and the media. The way to address this problem is not to just to put kids on diets and make them more active. You must get to the root of the problem to understand why such a situation is occurring.

It is said that a child learns more in the first five years of his or her life than at any other time. If this is the case, then we need to understand how a child’s brain works from a young age. A newborns brain is like a sponge and it will soak up information from its surroundings.

Now as this information is some of the earliest information entering the child’s brain, it stands to reason that the belief in the knowledge the child is learning will be very strong, because the child will have no reason to distrust it. The child has not yet learned about doubt, lies, or mistrust.

So this information will form the building blocks of how the child will see the world as he or she grows older. Children learn by watching and touching, they are natural explorers of everything in their small world. They are fascinated by shapes, colours, and language.

Whatever the child see’s or experiences will be considered as natural or real. Now say that child experiences a diet which is unhealthy and a life of little activity in the first five years of its life, he or she will automatically believe this lifestyle to be completely normal, and as I have mentioned before, these early beliefs can be very powerful and extremely difficult to change.

Another point to make which nearly all of us have been guilty of at some point is to put the child in front of the television to watch some kids program so that the child will stay occupied. Now the problem here is not the kids program that is on. It is the commercial breaks in between.

The child will see commercials from fast food companies, and these commercials are geared towards kids. A child will see bright colours, a happy catchy tune, and people laughing and smiling. Now initially the child may not know what the commercial is all about. However the child will understand that there are some great colours, the tune is really great, and there are lots of smiles everywhere.

Wow! This looks great to a child and then bang, this experience is lodged into the child’s brain. A few years down the line the child will associate whatever fast food was being advertised with a happy experience. The chances are because of the years going by, the child won’t actually remember the commercial, but the fast food will jog a vague memory of happiness.

As we get older it is difficult to recall our early childhood memories. These memories are buried deep in our sub-conscious minds and are very difficult to extract. This is why when people do something or react in a certain way to a particular situation; they can’t understand why they behave in that way. The answer lies in our early childhood experiences which are locked away as immensely strong beliefs.

The question at the end of the day is that has the increase in the fast food industry, and the vast amount of advertising in the media, led to an increase in obesity among teens and weight issues? This is for you to decide as an individual, but I will say that you should be careful of the messages being received by your child’s brain, because whatever your child’s brain picks up at a young age, may well be the basis of his or her future.

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