"Sugar and spice and everything nice" may no longer be the way little girls view themselves. After all, sugar makes you fat. And when you're fat, you're not a very good person or very smart. Right? Well, sadly, new research shows that many 5-year-old girls seem to think so. The study was published in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics.

It's a fact: Children in the U.S. are becoming more overweight. Recent studies have shown that 14% of school-aged children weigh more than they should, and increasingly, preschool-age children aged 4 and 5 also are overweight. The problem takes its toll on the body through diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and a negative body image.

But the ways that parents handle their daughter's problem with weight can make all the difference and help shape how she views herself within the world around her. And that was the focus of this study.

"Findings from the present study suggest that how we deal with children's overweight may have implications for the psychological health of a considerable proportion of U.S. children," write Leann Lipps Birch, PhD, and Kirsten Krahnstoever Davison, MS, of the department of human development and family studies at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

In their study, Birch and Davison interviewed almost 200 5-year-old girls to see how they felt about their weight, body image, intelligence, and physical abilities. Researchers then questioned parents about whether they restricted their daughter's diet, and also their concerns about their daughter's weight and how they expressed these concerns.

Investigators found that girls with higher weight had a lower self-concept. That is, they scored lower when asked questions such as "Do you make friends easily?," "Are you good at puzzles?," and "Does your mother smile at you a lot?"

From parents' questionnaires, investigators learned that parents of an overweight child might react to their child's weight by expressing concern and directly or indirectly criticizing the child in order to encourage behavior change. In addition, they may strictly control the types and quantities of food their child has access to in an attempt to foster healthful eating. And herein may lie the root of how parents sabotage their child's problem, experts say.

"These messages, when combined with being overweight, may negatively impact a child's evolving sense of self," the authors write. In fact, other recent research has shown that in addition to promoting negative self-concept, restricting foods actually can encourage overeating, even when the child isn't hungry.

Child psychologist Elizabeth Berger, MD, agrees. "When parents pester their kids about what they should and shouldn't be eating, their efforts backfire," she tells WebMD. "The parent's goal is not to make the child's life jail, but to help the child be enthusiastic from the inside. Taking a plump child and denying them cookies is bound to fail -- it just creates an eating disorder. It means that the child is geared up to eat the whole box." Berger is author of Raising Children With Character.

So what should parents do if their child is overweight? Birch and Davison suggests they encourage and increase family leisure activities that include active play for girls and make a wide variety of foods available in the home, with a larger proportion of fruits and vegetables.

Berger suggests, "Parents should serve tasty, nutritious food, sit down to enjoy it with their children, and not say a word about weight."

Indeed, maybe actions do speak louder than words. Experts agree that parents are role models to their children in terms of appropriate food choices and positive body image.

"The entire culture seems to have a hot button about thinness and youth," Berger says. "I think the most important thing for a young girl's self-esteem is her mother's self-esteem and the mother's joy in the daughter for the person that she is."

"It's very important for parents to support their overweight children," Barbara A. Horne, RD, clinical nutritionist at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, tells WebMD. "If parents are not role models -- if they don't provide constructive direction and concrete advice -- they're likely to just feed into the child's negative self-image."

But when a young girl's self-concept or weight is affecting her overall functioning, social activities, and her leisure time, it might be time to seek professional help. The message to restrict food is sometimes better accepted, Horne says, when delivered by a professional. And professional help might begin with educating the parents, Horne says, by giving them some "concrete, step-by-step nutritional advice to improve their own eating habits so they can be the role model for the kids."

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