The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of parents regarding their overweight child’s participation in physical education. With nearly 400,000 deaths per year associated with overweight and obesity (Mokdad, Marks, Stroup, & Gerberding, 2004) and rates of youth obesity on the rise (Hyantsville, Eberhardt, Ingram & Makuc, 2001), this study is particularly timely. While this paper focuses solely on parental perceptions, data were also collected from children as part of a larger study concerning perceptions of overweight/obese youth. Grounded in the theoretical framework of learned helplessness (Peterson, Maier, & Seligman, 1993), one of the goals of this study was to examine how parents described their child’s attributions to success and failure. Learned helpless teenagers often attribute failure to stable and persistent causes such as a lack of ability and attribute success to luck or an easy task. Participants were 8 mothers, 3 fathers, and 1 mother-father pair whose son or daughter was aged 13-18 and had a body mass index at or higher than the gender- and age-specific 85th percentile based on Centers for Disease Control growth charts. Participants were interviewed for 30-60 minutes using the standardized open-ended interview and the informal conversational interview approaches (Patton, 2002) on two occasions. Questions focused on parents’ perceptions of the importance of physical education, their past physical education experiences, their child’s attitude toward and performance in physical activity, and the degree to which they supported their child’s participation in physical education. Interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. A thematic log and a reflexive journal were maintained. Data were analyzed inductively to search for commonalities/patterns and deductively to determine the appropriateness of the theoretical framework. Peer debriefing, member checks, triangulation, and a negative case analysis were conducted. Data analysis revealed two primary themes and several sub-themes. The first centered on participants’ strong support for their child’s participation in physical education. Reasons for support included that physical education helped with learning team sports, engaging in physical activity, enhancing emotional and spiritual well-being, releasing stress, and learning teamwork. The second theme focused on negative memories of parents’ participation in physical education. Participants discussed the discomfort of changing in the locker room, wearing the required uniform, being slower than their peers, and having “militaristic” and “non-creative” teachers. To conclude, the investigation supports the theoretical framework of learned helplessness and highlights how parents’ perceptions of physical education have changed since they were students. Keyword(s): high school issues, physical activity, youth-at-risk