فرزندپروری برای جلوگیری از نارضایتی از بدن و الگوهای غذا خوردن ناسالم در کودکان پیش دبستانی: مطالعه اجماع دلفی

Interventions to prevent body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating patterns are needed in early childhood. Identifying effective parenting strategies would be useful for parents and prevention researchers. To develop expert consensus, an online Delphi study was conducted with experts (N = 28, Mage = 44.34) who rated statements describing potential parenting strategies gleaned from a systematic literature search. If 90–100% rated a statement as either Essential or Important, it was endorsed as a guideline. From a total of 335 statements 153 were endorsed. Despite some areas of disagreement, including whether parents should weigh their child or discourage weighing, experts were able to reach consensus on a wide range of issues, such as how to discuss healthy eating with children. The developed guidelines provide a novel and required resource for parents, and a framework for researchers developing interventions to prevent the onset of body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating patterns in early childhood.

As the foundations for body image and eating patterns appear to be laid in early childhood, it is important that prevention efforts in body dissatisfaction and unhealthy eating, target preschool children. By the end of the preschool years, at age 6, children have started to develop their body image; that is, their subjective evaluation of their physical body and appearance ( Smolak and Thompson, 2009a and Smolak and Thompson, 2009b). Research suggests that three- to five-year-old children internalize body size stereotypes, associating positive characteristics with thin body figures and negative characteristics with fatter figures ( Holub, 2008 and Spiel et al., 2012). Young children have also been found to show behaviors consistent with body dissatisfaction, such as body checking and negative comments about their appearance ( Tremblay & Limbos, 2009). In adolescence, body dissatisfaction has been linked to the development of a range of poor health outcomes, including higher depressive symptoms, lower self-esteem, lower physical activity, and greater risk of disordered eating and clinical eating disorders ( Neumark-Sztainer et al., 2006, Paxton et al., 2006 and Stice and Shaw, 2002).