My daughter and her friends have all been dicussing dieting

[NotAnOtter]

For a week now since they found out about the weigh -in!
They talk about it all the time and some girls call themselves fat.
This did NOT go on before this was announced.I have had to lecture dd but i am sure they are all still doing it

[bluejelly]

How old are they

[frogs]

Aaargh, this is one of my RL pet parp topics -- makes me so angry. Luckily no-one has said anything about a weigh-in at my children's school, but I would be organising a mass boycott before you could say weight-watchers.

Y6 is just the wrong time, as well, they're so self-conscious about their bodies anyway at that 'just starting to develop' stage. Dd1 has told me several times recently that her friends are all moaning about being fat, but luckily keeps saying how ridiculous she thinks it is. Clearly my brainwashing is working -- I've been repeating myself like a loon since she was about six to the effect that foods are not healthy or unhealthy as long as you have a good mix, that a diet consisting purely of fruit would be as bad as McDonalds, that as long as you eat a good range of different kinds of food and take plenty of exercise you'll be healthy regardless of your body shape.

I do understand the govts and school's attempts to encourage healthy eating, but I also think that it risks giving children an unhealthy obsession with weight. I think the education needs to be much more sophisticated -- eg. these are the food groups you need to be including, how to find exercise you enjoy, etc.

Grrrr.

[motherinferior]

Frogs has said it. Brilliantly.

[frogs]

Oh yes, and dangerously radical idea alert how about teaching them to bl*dy well cook?! Given that dd1 in Y4 spent six, yes that's 6, weeks' worth of literacy lessons writing out instructions for making a sandwich, you'd think they could have squeezed out a little time to take the class to the local market, do their own shopping and cook themselves lunch, no?

[Hallgerda]

NotAnOtter, I have a son in Year 6 who was recently weighed, and it really wasn't an issue for us. I was sent a consent form, so had a chance just to say no. The results (value and percentile for height and weight, with no comment) were sent to me in a sealed envelope. I showed them to my son, but only after establishing that his reason for wanting to know was mere idle curiosity.

I understood that the reason for weighing the children was to obtain statistics on the much publicised "obesity epidemic" in order to inform policymaking on the matter, which is why I was willing to consent. Had there been any suggestion that it was intended to get the children into the habit of weighing themselves or dieting I would not have allowed my son to be weighed - our bathroom scales are only used for weighing luggage, and are hidden away the rest of the time.

Is it not a good thing that the weighing has given you an opportunity to talk to your daughter about this issue? Even if it had never occurred to her and her friends before, surely it was only a matter of time before it reared its ugly head?

[NotAnOtter]

No i dont think it is a good thing. My daughter had weighed herslf a jhandful of times in her life and has been hopping on and off the scales like errrrrr errrrr 'paris hilton??'

I just think its totally the wrong time for girls in particular. Most of her friends are entering puberty and they are all changing schools. Hugely stressful events - potentially.
This simply heightens awareness in a society with too much body conscious obsession already.
I think boys would laugh it off more

[desperateSCOUSEwife]

I think the issue of weighing children is really sad
It will be only be added to another sociological report full of statistics
on how obese children are

surely a gp or school when seeing an obviously obese child, there parents should be pulled to one side and diet discussed iykwim

instead of young girls and boys feeling fat and depressed for nothing

[NotAnOtter]

agree totally scouse ...11 year old girls imo can be silly enough without this - imagine all the bitching !

[Caligula]

I like the way they decide to weigh everyone to find out if they're fat, but don't do anything positive like insist on x hours PE per week in school, or banning crap food machines in school or banning junk food ads before the watershed.

[desperateSCOUSEwife]

bitching, skitting you name it

kids have a hard enough time as it is with differing peer groups

[desperateSCOUSEwife]

yes caligula the canteens are still fulll of fat busting chips and snags
not to forget cnas of coke

[NotAnOtter]

agree!

[frogs]

Hallgerda, you have a ds. Girls of this age are a whole different ballgame. Dd1 would be mortified to be weighed by a stranger or any member of staff at her school, in the same way most women wouldn't appreciate being weighed by their place of work. It just focusses their attention on weight as such, rather than encouraging them to think about their overall lifestyle in terms of fast food intake, exercise and time spent on msn, which would be much more productive and less neurotic-making imo.

[desperateSCOUSEwife]

frogs it is a fact that more boys are now suffering from eating disorders
it is just not widely known about
very sad for any child to feel sad due to their weight
without it being emphasised by schools
regardless of gender

[frogs]

Yes, clearly boys can suffer too. But IME girls are subject to a whole different set of pressures, and weight is much more negatively loaded for girls than for boys.

[desperateSCOUSEwife]

agree with the pressures of the media regarding wafer thin girls
which boys dont have
but boys still have the spots,peer group, puberty and why havent I got a girlfriend pressures

[frogs]

It would be more productive imo if they did a fitness test with the kids, eg. measuring heartrate at rest and after doing a set of step-ups or circuits of the playground. That would uncover the skinny-minnie couch potatoes, as well as showing some of the naturally chunkier kids that they can still be fit without having to look like a twiglet.

[motherinferior]

AND (climbs on soapbox) gave more options of different sorts of physical exercise, not just ones that involve running around in skimpy shorts.

[Fauve]

Frogs, your post about fitness tests is so right. Only there's no money for the pharmaceutical companies in fitness, whereas there is in 'treating' obesity. First establish your market!

[Hallgerda]

I agree with Caligula and frogs that there are simple measures (teaching children to cook, more PE, less junk food peddled on school premises)that could be taken without the need for further information.

I'm not so sure about the fitness test idea - it is just as possible to go off the rails being obsessive about fitness as about weight.

I think schools are being rather unfairly attacked over this weighing - isn't it a Government scheme carried out by the primary care trusts at schools, rather than a school scheme? And surely it's dieting parents and wider society that are driving the obsession with skinniness, not schools.

[Blandmum]

dd started this earlier this year. (9 FFS!)

I knocked it on the head by finding a reputable on line childrens BMI calculator. We weighed her, and measured her height, fed it in to the program and it calculated her as the perfect BMI for her age.

Not a peep since.

[frogs]

Might depend where you live, Majorca -- we're in a v. mixed part of inner London, and I would say that all the obese/ overweight children in Y6 come from families who are right at the bottom of the social, economic and educational pecking order. None of the vaguely middle-class kids are fat. I'm presuming it's governed by an unholy combination of lack of organised exercise, excessive TV/video/computer and poor diet. I accompanied dd1's class (then Y4) for a school swimming lesson once, and it was very striking that there was almost complete overlap between the overweight kids and those who couldn't swim at all, and had clearly never been taken swimming before.

I really can't see how weighing them is going to tell you anything you can't tell just by looking at them. Whereas teaching them how to put together cheap and healthy vegetarian meals just might make a difference.