The behaviour of grandparents can have a negative influence on children’s health

Dear grandparents, everyone knows that you want the best for your grandchildren. Consider, however, if by chance, completely unconsciously, you are not making mistakes along the way. Parents, look at your own parents and their behaviour towards your children. The freshly published research ruthlessly summed up the influence of grandparents’ care on the grandchildren’s health.

In recent times, researchers realised that they know a lot about the influence of grandparents’ care on the upbringing of children, when they are considered to be their main guardians. However until now, what it has not been considered is the influence of grandparents on children, when parents bring children up, but grandparents only occasionally see their grandchildren. However literally just this month, a research, so called systematic review has been published on this exact topic. Researchers from the University of Glasgow carefully analysed and reviewed 56 research papers tackling the above subject.

Absolutely all of the research indicated that grandparents have a negative influence on children’s weight. Children who often see their grandparents are more prone to develop overweight and obesity. This is linked to the fact that practically all the research papers demonstrated that grandparents have a negative influence on the quality of diet of their grandchildren. Only one research showed positive influence of grandparents, who were encouraging their pupils to eat healthy foods and dishes. Similarly only one research confirmed positive influence of grandparents looking after the appropriate level of exercise of the children. However, in this aspect the research is not so unanimous, some research did not observe any correlation between the two. Nevertheless, however, most of research demonstrated that grandparents allow children to spend more time sitting and playing computer games.

One can admit that this is not looking good… On the other, hand the grandparents surely do not want to harm their grandchildren. Where has this negative influence come from? Researchers characterised grandparents in majority as under informed and lenient people, and the sweets serve as an emotional tool to shape their relationship with their grandchildren. Significant proportion of grandparents wanting to get the smiley reaction on the face of a child offer them sweets and bakes high in calories. When thinking about the health of the child, grandparents often lead to the overindulgence. So many times we can hear a grandma saying: “Eat, eat, take a second portion! You have to have strength to grow!” Unfortunately the outcome is a growing number of children suffering from overweight and obesity.

The research authors underline that the influence of grandparents on grandchildren’s health will continue to bring about more and more consequences. Nowadays, parents have less and less time, they work more, and equally the number of single mothers continues to raise, hence the grandparents more often are the ones looking after children. What is making the situation even worse is the fact that any conversation with elderly people can be quite difficult most of the time. It is very difficult to convince the grandparents they they are exaggerating with the amount of sweets given to the little ones. All these dependencies cause a growing percentage of people affected by obesity and increasingly more serious health problems.

We should make ourselves aware of the risks related to the influence of grandparents on the upbringing, diet and physical activity of our children. Let’s try to correct behaviours that concern us right from the beginning. Let us be patient whilst explaining to our parents that even though they wish well, they do not necessarily do the right things. Understandably, it requires a lot of effort, paying attention to what the children are doing in grandparents’ company, as well as determination in the discussions with the grandparents. I am sure, however, that all these hardships will in the future pay off in the health of children, their proper nutrition and development conditioned by a large amount of physical exercise.