The final helping

neil donnelly

Neil is a Fellow of the bDA and retired Dietetic Services Manager. His main areas of interest are weight management and eating disorders.

it was mid-morning and i was busy extracting the stone from a nectarine for my grandchildren and my mobile ‘pinged’. it was an email from NHD‘s Publishing editor asking if i could get my column into her in the next day or two.

The reasons for this request was that a small editorial group, including myself, are due to meet up next week and it would be helpful if the magazine was finished beforehand. Hmm! At this point, after cutting up the aforementioned nectarine into bite size pieces and putting them into the correct small individual personal coloured dishes for my grandchildren, I pondered the possibilities.

We had left home at 6am that morning to travel down the M6 for two hours to look after the grandchildren for the day. This we do at least every two weeks. Looking after a three-and-a-half-yearold and a one-and-a-half-year-old for 10 hours (not counting debriefing) while their parents are working, requires at least two grandparents in our experience! However, I could have a quick read of the paper and see if there is anything that catches my attention for my Final Helping column. Something did:

‘Researchers found grandparents overfed their grandchildren, giving them sugary snacks and drinks. Children cared for by their grandparents were twice as likely to be overweight or obese.’

I was then interrupted by my grandchildren both demanding another nectarine. Job done I returned to the article and found that it had been written by a Professor at the University of Birmingham whose research had been conducted on parents of children in China! How interesting. However the thrust of the argument was that conflicting childcare beliefs and practice between grandparents and parents are felt to undermine efforts to promote healthy behaviours in children.

Being a grandparent is fun, exciting, trying and sometimes tiring. Grandparents have a duty of care which goes something like, “Not on my watch”. When confronted by tears or tantrums, or sometimes “just as a treat”, one opts for an escape route. Whether this is a Mini Magnum, a packet of large chocolate buttons or a box of raisins, depends on the severity of the incident and the weather! A walk in the park/garden is always a good start to any grandparenting day, the activity somehow melts away any ’prick of conscience’ attributed to the ice cream or chocolate.

In closing though, I then looked at a further study by researchers in Social Anthropology at Oxford University and published the previous month in Paediatric Obesity. They found that emotional support from grandparents has a protective effect against child obesity, even with the presence of other risk factors. Result. Come on kids, let’s get down to McDonald’s, but don’t tell your mum and dad!