incredibly large/fat/ "hungry" 1yo - intervention required?

[spottyface]

I don't know if I'm being silly here, but wondering if my sister's 13mo baby is being encouraged to be just a bit too "bonny" - she is completely off the charts for height and weight - has always been >95th percentile, but is now about the size of a 2.5- 3 year old. While the men in sister's DH's family are very tall, they are not hugely fat. This kid is a prop forward...

The thing is, she eats about 4 adult-sized main meals per day. My sister feeds her (good healthy food), but seems to think that if the kid asks for more then she should be given more. So kid gets fed a large meal, then parents eat their dinner, kid rocks up to the table and demands more, parents feed her another meal... parents then feed her bread... parents then feed her fruit and yoghurt... kid then demands dessert like mummy and daddy... and gets it...

The paediatrician is reported to have said "well she's a very bouncing bonny lass, isn't she..." and said that she has a very healthy appetite. I wonder if my sister missed any suggestion of irony?

and grandparents (who aid in the overfeeding - they are of the 1950s "grossly fat sunburnt baby = healthy" school of thought) keep saying "oh as soon as she learns to walk she'll slim down".

They are right to some degree, BUT there seems to be no control over when to stop the kid eating more. None of them seem to think there has to be a point where habits change from breastfeeding totally on demand, to feeding solids more or less on demand, to feeding in line with the rest of humanity.

With my DS we occasionally distracted him rather than feeding him when he was demanding our (interesting-looking) food after he'd had dinner. Aged 4 he is running around a lot, is a healthy weight, and eats normally.

Does this sound a bit out of control? My happy bonny bouncing niece is the size of a (very fat) 3 year old and she's 13 months!

[akhems]

My son was a very fat baby.. he was in 18month clothes at 6 months and I had worries too but it ws true, once he started walking and running around, and more so once at nursery he did slim down and now he's a beanpole skinny 17 year old

[Lizzylou]

DS1 was huge, never stopped eating and when he walked at 11mths he did lose weight, wasn't until he was about 3 that he really lost a lot of weight. Now at 5 he is superskinny (despiting eating an enormous amount of (healthy) food). He is constantly hungry.
If your neice is off the scale heightwise then perhaps she is meant to be bigger. That said I would be trying to regulate her meals and food intake.

[Habbibu]

I think a lot depends on the height/weight proportion - if she's off the charts that's tricky, I guess. dd eats dinner with us, which solves one of the problems, doesn't usually get yoghurt, and has fruit if she wants more to eat. She's always been exactly in proportion for height and weight - she's just now (at almost 3) outstripping her weight in therms of height - we do make sure she gets out on her bike and walks a fair amount.

The paediatrician was prob not being ironic - they'd have to be pretty clear if they thought it was a problem, i guess.

[spottyface]

Thanks.

I do sort of wonder since sister's husband's family all had wet nurses and nannies who totally overfed and overindulged them; and all except sister's husband (who got a sharp shock on going to boarding school aged 9, which the others didn't do) now have great great difficulty with impulse control over anything, but especially food, and socially "difficult" levels of self-centredness.

They aren't lardbuckets as they all do a lot of endurance-type sport, but if they stopped the exercise they'd blow up like balloons pretty quickly (like their parents - "hulks of fallen muscle")

[Firawla]

depends as someone mentioned about the height, if her height is 95th aswel as weight being around that, then she's in proportion?
my DS was like that on both height and weight when he was younger (around 6 months or so), not had him weighed for ages but he has stopped gaining so fast although stil a little bigger than most of his age
its true when she walks she may stop gaining weight so much, so perhaps they can just wait & see?

[spottyface]

She is undoubtedly very tall for a 13mo (not sure of exact height but same as friends' 3 yo), but she is also extremely fat. She doesn't fit into my 4yo son's clothing as none of it - the arms, the legs, the waist, the neck, will actually go round her. My DS is pretty skinny, but she is definitely not in proportion.

I guess it's partly a "are they screwing up her biology by feeding totally on demand" question, and partly a "are they screwing up her ability to learn impulse control" question.

I know she's only one, so i'm not expecting her to be "reasonable", but she really seems to have no sense of satedness - and has been given no opportunity to learn it.

[Habbibu]

Hmm - dd has never looked "fat" - usual toddler tummy, and chubby legs, but you wouldn't have described her as fat. Why was she seeing a paediatrician?