Maternal Perception of School-age Children's Weight in Piedras Negras, Coahuila: A Pilot Study

Abstract

The perception of the body weight of the children by fathers, especially by mothers, has also been analyzed. Parents' knowledge of both the low weight of children and overweight and obesity has consequences for children's health due to the possibility of establishing preventive measures at an early age. However, it has been reported by studies done in different countries that a high proportion of parents do not recognize excess of weight in themselves and neither among their children [10-13]. Reasons have been given to explain this inability of parents to recognize that there is excess weight in their children such as refusal to admit the existence of problems with weight or a loss of sensitivity in the perception of excess weight due to that this is so frequent that it has become a phenomenon that is perceived as normal [14]. The purpose of this work was to evaluate a) the distribution of mother’s perception of children’s BMI categories and its relationship Introduction