Having a younger sibling may be good for your health

That pesky kid brother or sister who broke your stuff and got you in trouble all the time may have actually done you a favour. A U.S. study suggests that younger siblings might be really good for your health. That’s because by first grade, children with younger siblings are much less likely to be obese. Children who didn’t welcome a baby brother or sister into the family before first grade had almost triple the odds of obesity compared with children who experienced the birth of a sibling when they were around three to four years old, the study showed.

It is possible that when there is a younger sibling in the family, a child might become more active – for example running around more with their toddler sibling.

Dr. Julie Lumeng

The study doesn’t prove that being an only child will cause obesity or show how adding a new baby to family might help older kids maintain a healthy weight. But the results suggest that parents may make lifestyle changes after expanding the family that could be good to try even before another baby arrives, said senior study author Dr. Julie Lumeng, a pediatrics and public health researcher at the University of Michigan and C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor. Mealtimes might also be different with a second kid in at the table. Parents of only children can sometimes be controlling or hyper-focused about what their child eats, which can potentially lead to bad eating habits, some previous research suggests.

When parents use restrictive (e.g. keep food from children) or pressure-to-eat feeding practices (e.g. try to get kids to eat more food), children have an increased risk of being overweight.

Jerica Berge, a researcher at the University of Minnesota

sibling weight