Dec. 4 (CBSHealthWatch)-- Parents tend to underestimate their children's overweight problem, according to a new study that suggests parental misconception could be a barrier to prevention of childhood obesity.

Researchers surveyed 622 mothers between the ages 18 and 53 years, who have preschool children aged two and five years. They found that 79% of the mothers who have overweight preschoolers failed to recognize that their children were overweight. The misperception is more pronounced among mothers who had less than high school education.

"Very few of the parents recognized that their child is overweight at all," says the study's lead author, Amy Baughcum, who conducted the study at the Children's Hospital at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, but is now a doctoral candidate in the department of Clinical and Health Psychology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. "It has implications for obesity prevention. It will be hard to get parents involved if they are not even aware or willing to see that overweight is an issue."

Researchers set the overweight criterion at 90th percentile in weight among preschoolers. Despite controlling for race, sex, social economic status and other weight- related risk factors, researchers found that education was the main predictor of recognition of overweight problems. They found that one third of the mothers who had education levels higher than high school recognized the overweight problem in their children compared with only 11% of the mothers whose education levels were at or below high school.

"Children of mothers with low education may be at even greater risk of later obesity because the children are more likely to be overweight and their mothers are less likely to recognize it," says Baughcum. "For parents to involve themselves in childhood obesity prevention, they must first recognize when their children are becoming overweight and be concerned about the consequences."

In the mean time, researchers caution that parents should not be preoccupied with their children's weight problem. "The key is to encourage healthy, lifelong diet and exercise habits in children without producing a preoccupation with thinness or a poor self-concept related to body weight," Baughcum.

Albert Stunkard, MD, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says that the study provides an important public health message that obesity prevention should start with parents.

"Unless parents recognize obesity in children, nothing is going to be done about it," says Stunkard. "This may very well be playing a role in the increase of childhood obesity."

Stunkard says that the findings are somewhat surprising since the mothers recognized their own overweight problem, but they failed to perceive the problem in their own children. Since the study identifies education as a main predictor of childhood obesity, Stunkard urges education resources to be redirected to teach mothers basic information about the problem. "We've got to teach mothers what obesity is in children and identify obesity in their own children," says Stunkard. "Mothers have to know that their children are obese before they can jump in line and allow them to be treated."

(From Medscape)