Healthy Children

How Parents, Teachers and Community Can Help To Prevent Obesity in Children

By (author) Smita Guha

Publication date:

15 November 2017

Length of book:

224 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781475826654

This book is geared towards educators, teachers, administrators and parents of young children especially with health issues. The book will contribute to the literature in the field focusing on national and international concern about childhood obesity, highlighting the problems with obesity pre-diabetes, type 2 diabetes etc. Specifically, the book will provide research findings that children who are healthy do better cognitively, socially, emotionally, and, of course, physically. The focus of the book is to provide evidence based strategies to assist parents and educators to foster healthy weight gain in children and empower children to be active agents of change in their own health behavior. Leading a healthy life helps children live a higher quality of life. The book will provide a model that can be implemented at home and in school. The model will encompass nutrition education for children. Music will be a significant part in this model that will encourage children to sing and dance to the beat. Team and individual sports and games will be an integral part of the book, focusing on being active and avoiding sedentary behavior.

Introduction
Chapter 1: Motivating and engaging children to be active agents of health behavior
Chapter 2: Nutrition education unit
Chapter 3: Importance of physical exercise
Chapter 4: Social and emotional challenges for children with health issues
Chapter 5: Role of parents and family in providing nutrition education for their children
Chapter 6: Involvement of the community in promoting healthy development for the children
Chapter 7: Strategies to work collaboratively to prevent obesity epidemic
Appendix A: Workshop programs
Appendix B: Lessons across curriculum

This practical guide gives teachers, parents, community leaders, and elementary-school administrators some ideas for how and why they should motivate kids to exercise and eat right. Guha, who holds a PhD in elementary education, offers some basic, unsurprising, but worthwhile strategies: schedule exercise breaks during class, and make it easy for kids to walk or bike to school. Guha raises some interesting questions, such as whether obesity leads to behavioral issues or vice versa, and cites the main reasons for the increase in childhood obesity: an increase in soda consumption, an unhealthy decrease in fruit and vegetable consumption, a decrease in physical activity in school, and an increase in sedentary TV watching, computer usage, and video games. Suggested activities in the appendixes include one for making a Healthy Food Rainbow for the wall and asking kids to cut out or draw fruits and vegetables to attach to it. Guha supplies a long list of children’s books about nutrition as well as reference sources and discussion questions. In all, a workmanlike summary of the case for healthy living.