To complain about teacher weight comments

'Disordered thinking', how exactly? I haven't weighed myself in years, couldn't care less!

Exceptionally tall, of course is going to weigh more than average. If the OPs daughter was very tall for her age she would have mentioned that, although I’m guessing she wouldn’t have felt compelled to complain about it if she was a tall slim girl.

There's a World of difference for you because you were overweight as a child. Other people will be sensitive about other things. Probably whatever the teacher chose to measure, someone would have a moan about it. "Dear so called teacher, my daughter is increadibly self conscious about her massive hands" etc. etc.

Bodies come in a range of shapes and sizes, that we assume kids are too mentally fragile to hear that is ridiculous.

The issue is she said 50kg was normal meaning kids would see themselves as abnormal if higher or lower.

Teacher could have simply said use your actual weight or 50kg for the purpose of the exercise without commenting what was average or what was "normal". If course girls who may be over 50kg or under may then feel self conscious. It is a difficult age when they are maturing at different stages.

everyone knows you can’t do anything about you’re height.

weight however is made entirely responsibility of the individual. The world is prejudiced against fat people. That’s a fact. People who are fat are labelled as greedy, gluttons, lazy, stupid etc.

issues with weight can lead to eating disorders. Which are way more common than body dysmorphia related to height issues.

there’s a world of difference. And you know that.

There is a big difference about hearing stuff on SM versus having her weight made public knowledge amoungst her peer group of 30 feral teenagers, who will no doubt be saying “ why didn’t she want to be weighed” “ 50kg is heavy” etc
we don’t go to school to be publically humiliated

howcwould you like your weight , or breast size to be measured publically at work? Nope? Well it’s no bloody different.

SM is an entirely different pit of hell kids can fall into re any vulnerabilities or curiosities. And not what this is about

sure, teaching kids resilience is vital. But this is not acceptable. Would the teachers in staff room all do it and share with all kids at school? Nope, because this is personal information only.

What about short people or the freakishly tall? There is always someone who wants to make an issue out of something. Slippery slope to start pandering to it.

I still remember going through an exercise like this age 11, and it’s 50 years ago.
i was an overweight child even then, and am still
even if I’d had an option of putting an average weight, I know everyone in class would be thinking I was fat, and that’s why I didn’t want to weigh in. Wasn’t given that option. I was the outlying data point on the chart that was produced, and veryone in my year group got to know my weight. It was humiliating, I couldn’t face going to school for 3 days and feigned illness. I’ve never forgotten

those saying it was acceptable. No it wasn’t. You can measure height if learn8ng about normal distribution curves of anatomical variation. Whist BMI can be discussed, every bloody adult, teacher or not, must surely realise how a conversation like that can affect teens, especially teen girls . It’s a highly risky thing to do, in a public classroom. Let them cover bmi as homework at that age, with parents to help calibrate responses, not a class of 30 other brutal teens.

Exactly. You're in the profession and you wouldn't do this because you're cognisant. It's a shame that other teachers are not when this is a 'thing' that has been going on for years.

Height doesn't have the same impact but achieves the same objective. A bit of thinking shouldn't be beyond the wit of teaching staff.

I don’t see anything wrong with what the teacher did. I remember doing this in biology when I was in school and my kids have done it too.

The teacher was sensitive and didn’t force kids to weigh themselves and gave a very generous 50kg as a “normal” weight they can use to plot data if they preferred. Looking at the growth charts, a girl on the 50th percentile would track at 40kg at 12 years old.

Rather than complaining, put your energy into educating your child about different weights, body shapes etc and what a healthy weight means.
She will hear far worse from others, and the teacher doesn’t deserve reproof when they were obviously trying to be sensitive about the subject.

50kg isn't a normal weight for an 11yr old

You complained about that! I do feel for people working in schools. Your pointless, self absorbed complaint is going to waste the time of an administator to record it and pass it on and respond to you, waste of the teachers time to respond, waste of someone higher up to review it. All for what? Because your daughter, with a normal BMI got upset her weight is over the average!

Sorry but this makes me angry. It's your responsibility as a parent to explain to her that the teacher meant no harm, her comment wasn't personal and she is a perfect weight for her height and that frankly, she is wasting her energy being upset about such a throwaway comment.

Was the nurse short? Some women make such stupid nasty comments towards tall girls. Winds me up.

57kg is not a lot when you are tall.

I'm a teacher and I would never run an activity like this. I was a very average-weighted teen but I remember feeling very conscious of my appearance and that weight is a big part of that. I think the activity was ill-advised, and the teacher was lucky not to have a more challenging class where nasty comments could have sparked. As a parent, yes I probably would say something along the lines of "I just want to pass on that this activity was uncomfortable for my DD to take part in". I appreciate that the lesson was probably a bit dry, and this was a way of jazzing it up a bit, but I think it was a bit ill-advised.

I don't know, I think they should steer clear of weight and height.

Maybe do breast size and penis length instead, after all they are just human characteristics as well?

My threshold for making complaints about teachers is really high and this would not pass it.

I think her comment was fine because some kids will definitely not want to share their real weight. However, I think it was completely unnecessary to weigh them in class! That's what I'd have a problem with, not th harmless comment.

This is exactly why it's worth a polite reasonable email. The teacher might be horrified to know that her innocent comment has led to a healthy teenager trying to attain an unhealthy weight and might want to have the feedback.

how Is it ok to weigh a student at all? Seems horrible!

It’s quite amazing how people are glossing over how much shame and guilt there is around weight.
That it’s extremely easy to a 12yo to hear ‘I weight more than 50kg. I am awfully too heavy’ for example. Even though they’re taller, more developed etc etc….

I mean all the people saying it’s just an exercise etc…
What if you had to attend a course with work colleagues and you were asked to weight yourself in frim of everyone. Would you like it or find it triggering!
What if you were told ‘just put 50kg as its the normal/average weight for women’? if you feel uncomfortable. Still happpy?

Im sure no adult would go along. Why are we expecting teenagers to do so ?

It's not nice.

I wouldn't worry about her weight yet, I was a chunky chubby child, I've always been a slim adult.

I agree that children put on weight differently. My Daughter is very slim, my DS is chunky and overweight by bmi, he is self conscious of it, he loves being the tallest.

He has regularly hospital visits they aren't concerned by his weight as he is tall, he puts on weight so easy and doesn't lose it.

Whereas DD eats the same amount, she never gains an ounce.

My niece was chubby but sporty too, she lost her chunky look as a teenager and is slim fit mid twenties.

picking up on some comments:

usually the point of these lessons is to show the concept of variation, that is on a group of animals the heights and weights will vary. Usually if you take the data and draw it on a graph you get a bell curve.

the teacher would not have been able to make up random data as if they did this it wouldn’t draw a bell curve when plotted and that is the point of the lesson.

there’s a whole load of biology based on this and it is something that will be on the curriculum.

most schools don’t use weight any more because of the eating disorders issue.

shoe size can be used but you don’t get quite as good a graph. Height is generally considered a better option although I have seen it done with head circumference or handspan.

They didn't if they didn't want to. Practical lessons are important and the majority shouldn't be denied the opportunity because a handfull are precious about it. The teacher struck a reasonable balance here. It's similar with the disection lessons, don't do it if you don't want to, but everyone else doesn't have to bend to your whims.

in any case, everyone knows that people weigh different amounts. It's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

Wtf. That's exactly the reaction I've got at OPs daughters age (12, she's not 11). And from a nurse, no less. In front of my class.

We had to queue and were weighted. I went after a petite girl and the nurse exclaimed, wow, what a BIG lass you are! And proceeded with advice how to lose some weight, because 57kg is A LOT for a girl.

Why didn't she take into account that I was 1.8m (5'11 I believe) and my classmate was about 5 foot nothing, I have no idea. I was slimmer than the other girl, just weighted more because I'm tall (reached my full adult height at the age of 12)

I weight 55kg now and I'm a small size 6, slightly underweight, not overweight. So it depends on height.

My DD is 12 now, 5'4'', weights 54kg and her BMI is 20.4, she's not overweight at all.

I'd complain OP, yes. YANBU.