SCHOOL uniforms billow on high-rise laundry rods, like kites in the wind.
How terrible, if you have not noticed yet, that our kids need such big clothes.
In Singapore, although the percentage of obese children has come down from 14 to 10, there are still some 60,000 of them in school, according to figures from KK Hospital. This is alarming.
And who is to blame?
Parents, to a large extent, I say.
I used to gaze at plump children and feel jealous because my younger daughter looked as if she had escaped from some sort of labour camp.
But when I looked again at what overweight kids have to deal with - health problems, bullying, their hunger, I think she is better off.
And as parents, we can continue to ply her with food. If she were obese, could I really deny her food? That would go against all our parental instincts.
I know you can't monitor what kids eat 24/7. Food is so readily available and you don't have to be over 18 to buy it.
But it is up to us parents to feed our kids properly. And the truth is, healthy food takes effort and costs more. Junk food is cheap and easy.
We must teach them about nutrition and the consequences of over-eating. It is not lovingly indulgent to encourage them to eat and eat, and grandparents, bless them, should note that they are the spoilers with the worst foods - sweets.
Not that we should be spoilsports, but treats are really treats.
Parents may like to try to implement non-food rewards. We did. Instead of treating our kids to ice cream when they got good grades, we rewarded them with a desired CD or some other non-food item.
Jamie Oliver made a fortune trying to make school dinners in the UK healthier, but instead of kids becoming lean, mean learning machines, they refused to eat his food and ate what they wanted instead.
Parents passed fish and chips and burgers through the school railings, as if covertly feeding inmates at a prison.
Children are bombarded with TV ads from fast-food chains and other purveyors of high-fat, high-sugar items. And they exert themselves less than in my time.
I wasn't particularly active as a child but still climbed trees, ran around and came home exhausted. We didn't have a car so I had to walk and run for the bus.
The reasons for the obesity problem may be complex.
But we owe it to our kids to get them to eat better and exercise more.
The writer is a former Singaporean marketing professional.
This article was first published in The New Paper on November 04, 2008.
