Obesity in children
While chubby children are loved by everyone, obese children attract no one. Some of these children are by nature very sensitive and such a treatment from their schoolmates and playmates disturbs them mentally which affects their overall interest in all their activities. Many a time they withdraw into themselves or develop a dislike for sports or games and spend most of the time in isolation, eating or nibbling being their only diversion.
Some mentally handicapped children, as in Down's syndrome, are found obese. Though these children have normal weight at birth they tend to become obese as they grow older. There are two reasons for this, wrong eating habits and lack of exercise. Feeding such children is an extremely tiring and time consuming job because of the non-coordination of their muscles and very slow movements of their limbs as well as the inability to chew the food thoroughly before swallowing. Hence they are mostly fed soft food. This deprives them with the need for thorough chew­ing. Because of the slow movements of their muscles and joints, exercise is also denied to them.