About 30% of American teens are overweight and 15% of teens are considered obese. This terrifies me. I can only imagine the difficulties laying ahead of these kids. Ever since I started writing this blog, I have been following all sorts of reports, personal stories, and research studies devoted to the issue of being overweight. NPR’s series on “Obesity in America” has been exceptionally illuminating on the complexity of the struggle with weight. On how just a single factor, namely excessive weight, can affect every single aspect of one’s life, ranging from obvious health risks and physical immobility to much more inconspicuous ones like depression and intimacy problems. Setting the young ones on the path to these problems seems very unfair to me.

Being a teen is a vulnerable stage of one’s life. This is when one’s view of the world and of oneself start to take shape. Instead of greatness, however, the view gets rather bleak. Kids may try different diets and programs, but what it means is that from the onset of their conscious lives they have to take on the battle that more often gets lost than won. Some kids may get lucky and be send to boarding schools specializing in weight control programs. But these schools are prohibitively expensive (e.g. $60K/year), only few will be able to attend and learn, and the rest will remain….. in hands of their parents. So Dear Parents, I beg you, for the sake of happiness of your own kids, help yourself to help your kids to stay free from the problems that excessive weight typically brings.

Picture By wstryder

By Dorota Porazinska