title: Stuck in a vicious circle of stress. Parental concerns and barriers to changing children's dietary and physical activity habits.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Dietary habits and physical activity are often the focus of obesity prevention programmes and involving parents in such programmes has proven to be effective. The aims of this study were to describe parents' concerns about their children's diet and physical activity habits and to describe barriers to change.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The study used archival data gathered unobtrusively in the form of memos taken after sessions of Motivational Interviewing as part of the parental support programme, A Healthy School Start. The 74 MI-sessions were conducted from October 2010 to April 2011 with either a mother or father or both, all with children in pre-school class. Thematic analysis was applied. Three themes were identified regarding children's dietary habits: amount of food consumed influenced by behaviour in the family, eating situations influenced by stressful everyday life and family interplay, and food choices influenced by stressful everyday life and family interplay. One theme appeared regarding physical activity: physical activity influenced by stressful everyday life and family interplay.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Family interplay appears to be an important link between the work-life stress perceived by parents and less healthy food and physical activity habits in the home. Both lack of parental cooperation and negative parent-child interactions may act as barriers to healthy eating and physical activity and should be addressed in future intervention studies on health-related behaviours of children.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden. Electronic address: asa.norman@ki.se.
authors.forename: Åsa
authors.initials: Å
authors.lastname: Norman
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Box 23100, 141 83 Huddinge, Sweden.
authors.forename: Anita
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Berlin
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Elinor
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Sundblom
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Liselotte Schäfer
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Elinder
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Gisela
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Nyberg
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D004032:Diet; D004435:Eating; D015444:Exercise; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D015438:Health Behavior; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D016487:Parenting; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology; D063766:Pediatric Obesity / Q000517:prevention & control*; D012574:Schools; D012944:Social Support; D013315:Stress, Psychological; D014937:Work
keywords: A Healthy School Start; Family interplay; Overweight; Parental feeding practices; Qualitative method; Work–life stress