Los niños con escaso autocontrol probablemente serán adolescentes con exceso de peso, según un estudio de la Universidad de Michigan ( English Version Follows )

at home, if the child was unable to wait, they were more likely to become overweight,” Lumeng says.





The association was partially explained by mothers’ weight status. The influence of maternal weight status on child weight reflects genetic as well as environmental factors, and both factors are possible explanations for this finding.





The weight of the mother made a difference in the child’s ability to wait to eat, Lumeng adds.





“Moms who are overweight themselves have kids that are less able to wait,” Lumeng says. “No study like this one can prove causation, but there's an association.”





This study suggests that if parents want to reduce the risk of obesity in their children, they should teach the child to delay gratification and model the behavior themselves, Lumeng says.





Parenting techniques may help children develop an ability to delay gratification, the authors say. Some strategies that have been described in prior studies have been keeping the desired item - in this case, food - out of sight, and therefore out of mind, or distracting the child’s attention from the food to another engaging activity.





Another possibility is simply providing a logical structure to snacks and mealtimes so that the child learns that food should not be eaten the moment it is desired, but waiting until the next snack or meal time, the authors write.





The U-M study that appears in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine is one of several on the subject in this month's edition.





In a Pennsylvania State University study, 3-year-old children participated in a self-control assessment that involved sitting alone in a room with a toy for 150 seconds. Those who waited at least 75 seconds to play with the toy were classified as high in self-regulation. At age 5, the children participated in an exercise in delayed gratification that involved choosing a smaller portion of a favorite food immediately or a larger portion several minutes later.





Children who were unable to regulate their behavior at both ages had the highest body mass index (BMI) scores for their age at 12 years and the most rapid increases in BMI over the ...