How Does Childhood Obesity Affect Children’s Success in Elementary Schools?
Research reveals that over the recent ten years the United States has seen a tremendous increase in school going children with an obese problem (Ebbeling, Pawlak, & Ludwig, 2002). These have been attributed to many factors such as bad eating habits, genetics, and medical problems like hormonal disorder though in rare cases (Ventura, & Birch, 2008). Thus, this study is going to focus on how childhood obesity has negatively impacted children’s success in elementary schools.
Firstly, school children with overweight face many challenges like discrimination, bullying, being called names, and cannot play with other kids in school. In many cases, these children are discriminated by their fellows as they do not want to associate with them as they regard them to be ugly looking. This leads to incidences whereby obese kids are victims of bullying as they receive physical, social and mental torture from others (Taras, & Potts‐Datema, 2005). Obese students are called names that depict their body size and shape, which makes them feel so inferior and ashamed. As a result of these, kids who are obese develop a low self-esteem as they feel to be different from others. Thus, they tend not to associate with others in school activities as they are being bullied or called names that hurt them.
Due to the low self-esteem, such kids are always stressed to an extent that their concentration in academics is low. This can be proven by many types of research that have shown that obese children perform poorly as from kindergarten and even grades deteriorate in higher classes (Daniels, 2008).From the above statistics, it is clear that the United States government has a long way to go in educating citizens on healthy eating. Also, a measure should be put to ensure that there is no discrimination against obese students in elementary schools as this tends to affect negatively on their grades.
References
Ebbeling, C. B., Pawlak, D. B., & Ludwig, D. S. (2002). Childhood obesity: public-health crisis, common sense cure. The lancet, 360(9331), 473-482.
Ventura, A. K., & Birch, L. L. (2008). Does parenting affect children's eating and weight status? International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 5(1), 15.
Taras, H., & Potts‐Datema, W. (2005). Obesity and student performance at school. Journal of School Health, 75(8), 291-295.
Daniels, D. Y. (2008). Examining attendance, academic performance, and behavior in obese adolescents. The journal of school nursing, 24(6), …