Childhood and adolescent overweight and obesity have been a global health concern in recent years with many negative implications for children's health and development. Previous research has suggested that as compared to normal weight children, children who are overweight or obese perform worse academically (Falkner et al., 2001), have more emotional problems (Storch et al., 2007; Zavodny, 2013), and encounter more problems in their interpersonal relationships with peers (Gable et al., 2012). These findings, however, are not always consistent. Three major limitations in the literature can be identified. First, many studies of the associations between children's and adolescents' weight or BMI and developmental outcomes have relied on BMI from a single-time point without considering the trajectory of children's and adolescents' weight development. To study the cumulative effects of overweight and obesity, it is important to examine children's and adolescents' weight patterns and to address questions such as whether children and adolescents who are consistently overweight are at higher risk for negative outcomes than are children and adolescents who become overweight over time. Second, most studies did not have nationally representative samples that would allow for an examination of ethnic differences. Third, no study has examined the protective (moderating) role of parenting when investigating the influence of children's and adolescents' weight trajectories on developmental outcomes. To overcome the above limitations of previous research, I used data from a nationally representative subsample of children in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten 1998-99 cohort (ECLS-K). First, I identified adolescents' different BMI trajectories across kindergarten to eighth grade by using Nagin & Land's (1993, 2012) group-based trajectory modeling (GBTM). Second, because previous research had shown ethnic and gender differences in the rates of childhood overweight a