To complain about teacher weight comments

I think you need to stop whining. The teacher said they didn't need to write their weight down, surely so no-one would be embarrassed.
You and your daughter need to develop resilience.

The drama around the weight is being created by parents like OP. The teacher did not single out any child at all and is not in the wrong.The only "fault" is her use of the word "normal". If trauma and triggers are what you are feeding into your girls' heads, you are going to raise very fragile kids.

I wasn't being entirely serious.

There’s other options to study though. If you are looking at the normal distribution of characteristics then arm span and finger span are less problematic.

But there’s no actual reason for them to do the activity in the first place.

Because I think adults should be careful how they speak so children don't have lifelong insecurities.

Gosh it’s strange on here. About 75% of posters are empathetic, understanding humans and the other 25% are fucking nasty, or at the very least painfully ignorant. Aren’t people just bizarre.

It was completely unnecessary OP, I would talk to the school and I also appreciate the numerous teachers here who have also commented that it was inappropriate (the weighing AND the comment).

I’m a science teacher and this could have been in a couple of lessons. One is when they are doing about weight being different on different planets due to gravity. We always just use a fictional person/object for this. The other one is when you can draw around your foot and work out the pressure that you exert. Again, I never get the kids to actually use their own weight, I normally give them an average to use. The very old curriculum used to get kids to work out their BMI but that’s not been done in classrooms for years. There’s just no need to get the kids to do this in a classroom.

Stop teacher bashing - so ridiculous - you get out what you put in - so let’s all put in sensible kids - must be like walking on eggshells being a teacher these days.

That's how I read it! She WAS trying to be sensitive to avoid comparisons between individual kids.

I remember having to do this in school for a maths lesson (handling data or something), and the memory has stuck with me decades later. Looking back now, I wasn't overweight, but I was clearly one of the heaviest girls and at the time, like many teenage girls, I was incredibly sad and conscious about my weight. I was mortified when we all had to write our height and weight on the the board.

Basic common sense should tell teachers this kind of thing is a horrible idea.

The ‘normal’ BMI for girls doesn’t account for those that have hit puberty early & developed a ‘full’ figure.

At 11y my DD came up as overweight on the BMI chart for her age. But when I put in the same weight & height but age as 14y, she had a ‘normal’ BMI. These girls who develop early can already feel incredibly self-conscious, so teachers do need to be sensitive to this.

In this case it sounds like the teacher was trying to be helpful but the OPs DD took it that her weight was not ‘normal’ and something to be ashamed of.

This. The teacher is trying to personalise a practical lesson to teach an important science concept. Using body weight is not a good choice of variable, and easily avoided, to prevent exactly this sort of reaction.

YANBU. There is no good reason for a teacher to be weighing children in front of each other. Especially 12 year olds, they are old enough to be body conscious but are at wildly different stages of development.

Teacher here. I think it’s completely inappropriate to weigh children in front of each other. There will definitely have been some overweight children in that class who will have found that very upsetting and it could easily lead to bullying.

When I was a slightly chubby 9 year old, we were having a classroom discussion about the school holidays and I said that I had had chocolate Ready Brek at my GP’s house as a treat. The (young male) teacher made a smart remark, “that’s explains a lot, maybe lay of the chocolate Ready Brek.” I can feel the mortification now in my 50s. At the next breaktime, a horrible boy in the class started laughing about it and thereafter bullied me mercilessly. It was the most upsetting time of my life for the next 2 years and all triggered by a bloody teacher humiliating a little girl in front of a class.

I was injured in a car crash and I was wearing a seatbelt, therefore there’s no point wearing seatbelts

The fact is that this is a vulnerable time for children and things like this can push them over the edge or cause distress. Why have them weigh themselves? They could record something else that doesn’t have this risk factor.

Exactly. For example, an unsettled education with many supply teachers coming and going leading to having to work extremely hard in order to keep up with studies, that could be quite a stressful area which could cause a child who sets high standards for their achievement a lot of anxiety. But it's easier to pretend that it's all caused by once seeing a picture of a skinny model or blame it on a teacher.

I was bulimic. It had nothing to do with a biology lesson.

@jd88123 Going on about BMI to a 12 year old, who aren't measured normally by BMI is more damaging than being weighed once in school.

You don't know who had / ended up with an eating disorder though. Bulimia is especially easy to hide.

Facts aren’t body shaming?

BMI should not be used for children.
I thought that was widely known.
Children have different body compositions to adults, regardless of whether they have been through puberty. A 12 year old cannot be compared to an adult of the same height.

I knew 54kg at that height for a child would be the upper end of the % for 12 year old girls based purely on my own height and weight (as an adult).

Part of the learning includes collecting data yourself. Showing what outliers are, what happens if value is recorded incorrectly etc. Learning what personal data means.

Why would any mum (not every child has a mum either) provide their weight when OP is complaining about one child being triggered about being weighed once privately?

YANBU. Can’t believe there are people that actually think this is ok!