‘It’s been a lifelong thing for me’: Parents’ experiences of facilitating a healthy lifestyle for their children with severe obesity

Authors

Liz A. Saunders
Ben Jackson
Lisa Y. Gibson, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Justine Doust
James A. Dimmock
Elizabeth A. Davis
Lyndsey Price
Timothy Budden

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

BMC Public Health

Volume

23

Issue

1

PubMed ID

37337142

Publisher

Springer / BMC

School

School of Medical and Health Sciences

RAS ID

60258

Funders

Australian Research Training Program / The University of Western Australia

Comments

Saunders, L. A., Jackson, B., Gibson, L. Y., Doust, J., Dimmock, J. A., Davis, E. A., . . . Budden, T. (2023). It’s been a lifelong thing for me’: Parents’ experiences of facilitating a healthy lifestyle for their children with severe obesity. BMC Public Health, 23, article 1176. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-15780-y

Abstract

Objective: For parents and guardians, assisting children/adolescents with severe obesity to lose weight is often a key objective but a complex and difficult challenge. Our aim in this study was to explore parents’ (and guardians’) perspectives on the challenges they have faced in assisting their children/adolescents with severe obesity to lead a healthy lifestyle. Methods: Thirteen parents/guardians were interviewed from a pool of families who had been referred but did not engage between 2016 and 2018 (N = 103), with the Perth Children’s Hospital Healthy Weight Service, a clinical obesity program for children/adolescents (parent age M = 43.2 years, children age M = 10.3 years). Using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, we identified 3 broad themes. Results: Parental weight-related factors reflected parents’ own lifelong obesity narrative and its effect on their own and their families’ ability to live a healthy lifestyle. Perceived inevitability of obesity in their child reflected parents’ feelings that the obesity weight status of their children/adolescent was a persistent and overwhelming problem that felt ‘out of control’. Lastly, parents reported challenges getting medical help stemming from co-morbid medical diagnosis in their child/adolescent, and difficulties with medical professionals. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that parents face challenges in supporting healthy lifestyle for children/adolescents with severe obesity due to parents own internal weight biases and their negative experiences within the healthcare system when seeking help.

DOI

10.1186/s12889-023-15780-y

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.