10 year old DS thinks he's "fat" - advice needed please....

[OrlandoTheMarmaladeCat]

...DS is utterly convinced he's fat. His posture isn't brilliant so he does tend to stand with an arched back, pushing his tummy out. But he's not fat at all.

This isn't a particularly new thing as it's been going on for a while although he doesn't seem to have been worrying about it all for the past few months.

He's quite confident in other ways, although he is sensitive and doesn't show it.

He has now started skipping the odd lunch at school, and then today came to me in tears at the end of school because some of the others in his class were saying that he was the fattest in the class.

As a family we tend to eat pretty healthily, exercise is part of our lives ie we all ride, walk, swim, cycle, play tennis etc. Although on the larger side, I've not particular weight issues! I don't go on about 'constantly dieting' etc.

I would be grateful for any advice, as I'm quite concerned about him.

[stleger]

When my ds was 12 'fat' replaced 'gay' as a favoured term of abuse. Is he tall and slouching if his posture is off?

[Blandmum]

when dd made noises in this direction I found a good online bmi calculator for children. We measured her height and weight and she entered them, and found that she was exactly in the middle of the heathy band.

Never heard another word on the subject from her

[Libra]

This was my ds at ten as well. He was in a class where the rest of the boys (there were only 5 of them) were stick thin. He was very worried about his weight, even though he was not at all fat. They were not particularly nice about his weight, in the way that boys will pick on the one thing that you are unhappy about. Now he is at secondary school (nearly 13) all his new friends are the same size as him.
One thing that helped was getting him to do a sport he enjoyed. He goes twice a week to Tai Kwon Do, which is very cerebral but also concentrates on how you move, and thus his posture has improved. It also helped to go through all his clothes and throw out stuff he had outgrown. He is a small boy (smallest in the school at that time) and so was wearing clothes that might be the right length but were too tight for his age.

[Nightynight]

Ive been through this with ds2, aged 7 as well. actually, I started a mn thread asking how to spot if chidlren were overweight. reluctant to run, rolls of fat at wrists, overhanging tummy etc. I pointed all this out to ds, and we havent heard anything about fat for a while, touch wood.

[OrlandoTheMarmaladeCat]

Thank you all especially you, MB! I've just gone through the BMI chart with him (one specifically designed for children) and he is on the 52 percentile, couldn't be more average or healthy weight if he tried!

I think this has reassured him a bit, but we'll see.

He's not particularly tall, but he is double-jointed which means he is constantly over-flexing his ankles, knees and hips - consequently he stands in a very peculiar s-shape. He sees a podiatrist regularly who gives him exercises to do, ie standing on tip-toes which will automatically realign his spine. But I bet he doesn't do them when I'm not looking and reminding him!!

Going through his clothes is a great idea Libra, thank you! As for sports he likes, he does rather dislike team sports or having to be told what to do (gets that from DH ) but he loves hurtling around on bikes, climbing trees, playing football, british bull-dog etc. He loathed judo because he didn't like hurting anyone! He loathed rugby because he didn't like being hurt. So we've stuck with casual but regular sports that we can do ourselves. And I guess we'll carry on with those. He has said that he'd quite like to come running with me, so we'll see.

Thank you all very much for your help!