Self-regulation and Rapid Weight Gain in Children From Age 3 to 12 Years
Source: Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine

This objective of this report was to examine patterns of weight gain in children from age 3 to 12 years based on the extent to which they exhibited self-regulation in a self-control procedure at age 3 years and a delay of gratification procedure at age 5 years. The findings show that indeed children who exhibited low self-regulation in both procedures had significantly higher BMI at all points. In addition, children who exhibited low self-regulation in both procedures had the most rapid gains in BMI from age 3 to 12 years. These findings advance the literature on childhood obesity in at least 2 important ways. First, early childhood self-regulatory problems are important longitudinal predictors of weight problems in early adolescence. Second, self-regulation failure in the behavioral procedures appears to generalize to regulatory problems in the energy-balance domain of development, as evidenced by higher weight status and more rapid weight gain from early childhood through adolescence. While the delay of gratification procedure measured the ability to delay immediate gratification for a larger food reward, this procedure was not intended to measure energy-balance regulation. There is a specific behavioral protocol that measures eating (or overeating) in the absence of hunger, which is a more accurate indicator of self-regulation failure in the energy-balance domain. We are limited by the fact that there were no steps taken to standardize children’s hunger level before the delay of gratification procedure, so the extent to which hunger played a role in children’s decision to choose an immediate reward is unclear.

Our findings support recent studies showing that obesity is a problem that has its roots early in life26 and that early self-regulation failure may play a role in predicting overweight and obesity in the adolescent years. Already at ages 3 and 5 years, children who exhibited signs of self-regulation failure had higher BMI z scores and rapid weight gain into early adolescence. Failure to self-regulate energy balance in the early years is likely to be stable over time. Findings from studies on the same sample of children used in this study showed that 60% of children who were overweight at any time during the preschool years and 80% of children who were overweight at any time during the elementary period were overweight at age 12 years. Taken together, these findings highlight the need for future research to examine the role of self-regulation in the etiology of overweight and obesity.

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