Parental perception of toddlers body image

Abstract

Currently, weight disorders, have reached a large part of the world population. Obesity in children, including toddlers, is a serious public health problem. There are many parents who do not recognize their children's overweight/obesity and toddlers parents of are less likely to recognize this problem. It is known that identifying overweight/obesity is critical to implementing prevention strategies and interventions as early as possible. We carried out a descriptive study of quantitative approach. It was applied: “Toddler Silhouette Scale” to parents of toddlers who attend day care centers in located the district of Viseu, Portugal. Data processed using IBM-SPSS24. It was concluded that 83.3% of the parents reported that their child had normal weight, 13.3% underweight and 3.3% overweight. Regarding the silhouette that they consider ideal, the totality of the parents, select silhouettes referring to the normal weight. In the evaluation of the current silhouette of the child, 6.7% opts for the image 1 (low Weight) and 3.3% for the image 6 (overweight), all the others select images of normal weight. According to the weight records of the individual health report, 3.3% of the children were underweight, 10% overweight and 6.7% obese. Our results corroborate those of the author of the scale who concluded that most parents correctly identify the silhouette that matches their child's actual weight. A study carried out in Portugal, revealed an absence of parental perception about the excess weight of the children.