How to help obese children

[anna eu]

Dear moms, dear readers,

my name is Anna and I am currently engaged in setting up a telemedicine company together with several hospitals in Europe. We are establishing an online-based program to help obese children finding a healthy lifestyle. During about 2-3 months, the children will be treated by our medical experts (they have around 20 years of experience in this field, on average) through protocols, video-chats and personal communication. We also plan to enrich the platform with special features for kids, such as reward schemes or the integration of the Withings body scale, which automatically sends the measured weight to the kid’s online profile on our website (encoded and safe, of course).

I am aware that raising and educating an obese child is very special; this is why it would be of invaluable help to get to know your experiences, feedback and expectations: what should a perfect service look like to you, as a parent? What are your needs and wishes, so that you would be happy to register your child for such a program?

Please let me thank you in advance for your help and support! :)

Anna

[QueenOfTheMeadow]

My first sugestion would be to have a program for the adults.  Without support from the parents for guardians, you can not reach the children or make sure that they have adequate support.

[syoung]

Originally Posted by QueenOfTheMeadow 

My first sugestion would be to have a program for the adults.  Without support from the parents for guardians, you can not reach the children or make sure that they have adequate support.

I so agree with this.  I was very overweight as a child (some of the time maybe even obese), and from my own experience can second this quote.

I would also want the program to put a lot of focus on the kids' self esteem.  When my daughter was overweight, I never said it to her directly.

We talked about healthy living as a healthy thing to do (not as a way to lose weight), and I made sure to prepare healthy meals.  And I put a lot of effort into improving her self-esteem.  Now she is 17 and not overweight (MAYBE just 3-4 pounds), and I believe the self-esteem issue had a lot to do with it.