Birth Of Sibling A Few Years Into A Child’s Life Tied To Healthier BMI Trajectory For First Child.

website pointed out that “in the longitudinal study that tracked nearly 700 children across the US,” investigators “found that kids who did not have a sibling by the time they were in first grade were more often obese at that age compared to children who gained a sibling between ages three and four.” In other words, “the birth of a sibling a few years into a child’s life was associated with a healthier body mass index trajectory for that first child.” http://abcnews.go.com/Health/birth-sibling-healthier-body-weight-born/story?id=37586460 Researchers emphasized they are not claiming the birth of a sibling directly causes weight loss but that there is an association, and these findings need to be studied further. The surprisingly robust association led the study's authors to wonder what factors might be at play. “The possibility that seems most compelling,” said Dr. Julie Lumeng, a pediatrician at the C.S. Mott Hospital at the University of Michigan and an author on the study, “is that if you have a younger sibling, you’re more likely to run around.” Simply put, having a younger sibling is like having a built-in playmate: at any given time, the siblings are more likely to engage in some kind of active play. Another theory that is a little harder to prove is that once a second child arrives, parents tend to loosen up, which means less restrictive feeding practices for children. Somewhat counter-intuitively, previous research has shown that the more a parent restricts a child’s eating, the higher the risk of obesity. It may be that parental control prevents kids from learning to listen to their own hunger cues, thus promoting unhealthy eating habits.