Last weekend, I had the pleasure of taking our family to a Great Wolf Lodge. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend them. They have arcades, scavenger hunts, kid’s spas, toddler camps, and most importantly, fantastic indoor water parks. And they focus on being really family friendly.
Most of the time spent there is spent in the water park, and of course, you see all kinds of body types. Now the media likes to talk about the increasing obesity rate of children in this country. And I don’t doubt that it is as I saw some children that needed help. But I saw far more adults that needed help than children.
So this got me to thinking about how kids aren’t necessarily born this way (though some are), but that they learn it. If it were all genetics, then there should have been an equal ratio of overweight children to overweight parents. But that’s NOT what I noticed during our time there.
The way I see it, genetics are like balloons… they may determine a general shape, hold and lose air at different speeds, be designed for different purposes, but it’s the type of gas and quantity used that will help determine its size.
But the buck stops with us.
We, as parents, are setting the example, making the rules, and buying the food. We need to take responsibility of our eating, not only for our sake, but for the sake of our children.
We are the balloon-fillers.