Two Year old “overweight”

OP you can tell chat GPT exactly what your kid is eating each day and ask if it is meeting the recommended nutritional requirements. Be as specific about quantities as you can.

this will give you much more accurate information than the chat with the nhs dietician (I have done both).

My son was a very chunky toddler but also walked or balanced biked for miles every day. By age 4 he was stick thin. Then chunked out at puberty again and now has had a growth spurt and is stuck slim again. If he eats well and exercises I wouldn’t worry.

My kids tend to get a little chunkier for a couple of months, then have a growth sport and be skinny and tall again. Might it be worth monitoring more closely for the next few months to see how it goes. Just stand him on the scale and measure his height, then you can plug the numbers into the NHS BMI calculator.

My 2 were the same and have levelled out perfectly. They are now very tall!
Not all children are the same and if he is eating a normal healthy diet and there are no concerns there I wouldn't be worried.
I think people worry so much about following the rigid lines of a BMI without taking into account different body types/shapes.

Rule of thumb when mine were young is cam you see their ribs should be visible under the skin. If not then they are carrying too much fat.

Sometimes/often little children get chunky then they grow taller and balance out. Maybe he's about to take a stretch

People often have quite outdated approaches to child weight. Kids used to naturally get a lot skinnier as they got older, so that 8 year olds were skin and bones. But our food environment is quite different now and fat toddlers seem more likely to become fat kids rather than the fat melting off. Personally I would take the help and see if you can avoid storing up problems for later life.

I don’t believe BMI is supposed to be used for children? Certainly not of this age.

If he’s been consistently on this percentile since he was little I wouldn’t be worried. Especially if he eats a good varied diet with appropriate portion sizes.

All three of my children are high percentiles for both height and weight. Their dad is very tall and solidly built despite me being short so not that surprising. They’ve consistently been on those percentiles for most of their lives.

Nobody including any medical professionals/drs/HVs have ever raised it as a concern. I get a lot of comments about how tall they are but nobody has ever once suggested any of them are overweight. I mostly find it an issue that people assume they are older than they are and expect them to be more grown up (would get snotty comments about them
being in the pram still when they were just two for example). That and the fact that all their clothes/shoes are more expensive than most children their age as they’re in bigger sizes and I have to pay for them to go into places with height restrictions when they’re barely old enough to go on anything or people don’t believe me if I say they’re under the age for needing a ticket.

My eldest in particular was on the 98th percentile for weight and stayed there until about age 2. He then stayed pretty much the same weight for a whole year and grew much taller. Since then he’s been on the 91st percentile for weight. He’s almost 6 now and still on high percentiles. Nobody would say he looked overweight now but he was certainly a very chunky two year old! I did decline him having his height and weight measured when he started reception though. I know his measurements, don’t need a snotty letter about it or to upset him.

I find they go through phases of filling out, then having a big growth spurt in height and then repeating.

What size clothes is he in @oopsididitagain66 and what’s a typical daily meal plan

Look up how BMI is outdated and should not be used anymore...

My Gds was a very fat baby, and still ‘well covered’ at 2, but at 9 now, although eating loads, he’s extremely active and skinny as a rake. As soon as he was really running around the fat soon melted away.

Unless the family in general is overweight, and your ds is eating a lot of junk, I’d ignore the woman. Just 2 is still a baby as far as I’m concerned.

I don't think that a chunky 2 year old with a healthy diet needs a change just yet. I was an absolute fatty as a baby and toddler. I loved (and still love) food and my mum was incredibly strict with my diet in terms of not having processed stuff or too much sugar (she still gave me carbs). I naturally thinned out as I got older and was then the skinny teenager even though I still ate loads. My dad was the same.
If someone was feeding their child rubbish then I would underatand the concern but if not, why not wait and see if things change in the next year and then take action if not?

I think if a HCP refers your child for a form of health care, then it's your duty to your child to take them to the appointment. This is your child's body and health not yours, so I don't think you should override medical advice on his behalf. If you attend and its not helpful it's not the end of the world.

What percentile is his height? My DD was 95+ percentile at birth and as a toddler, but she is also the same kind of percentile for height and now as a 7 year old is a gangly, slim energetic very tall girl with large feet and long limbs, and I've always had to buy clothes about two sizes bigger for her because of her height. She was a little roly poly toddler but I see now that she needed all that stored energy for all the growing that she had to do. Your son may be due a growth spurt.

I think it is worth paying attention to if there is a mismatch between height / weight or if he is increasing through percentiles rather than staying relatively consistent.

Hi Op, sorry I’m back again ! If he’s following a consistent growth curve I dont think you have anything to be worried about , BMI isint always a great indicator for adults or children . You sound like a great Mum, you know what you are feeding your boy . It’s ludicrous anyone suggesting to you to take your child to a nutritionst. At 2 my youngest girl was built like a brick house, but solid muscle from climbing , god I was envious of the muscle in her arms but she looked seriously chunky , now she’s a tall 5 year old waif who sees eating like it’s a competition she puts away so much .

Perhaps changing from full fat milk (it that's what you're using) to semi skimmed? The advice on this has changed recently.

I was literally going to write a post along these lines. Don't discount genetics and look at both sides of the family.

My family's babies always pile on the pounds even when they're EBF. Their weight is quite literally off the charts and they have so many rolls. Give them a few years and they drop some of the weight but look a bit chubby until around 10 when the weight drops off and they shoot up and become slim. Nobody in my family is overweight as an adult and nobody has to massively watch their diet. Weirdly I notice the opposite with lots of other children who eat whatever they like and are stick thin until they hit their teens, especially late teens, and the weight piles on despite the fact that they're often not eating loads more than their peers. I think a lot of this stuff is genetically programmed.

No, it isn't normal for a HV to say that in that situation.

Normally they check that they're tracking the same centile. It is change they usually look for, and flag-up change greater than up or down by 2+ centiles.

They know some children have to be on the 95th centile and some on the 9th, otherwise it wouldn't be a centile.

So if your son has always been 95th centile, then I'm surprised they suggested an intervention. He's just continuing on his growth curve, which is what they usually check for.

Conversely my DS was always skinny / he was usually 95 centimetres for height and maybe 50 for weight? He pretty much followed this trajectory all his childhood and now as a young adult he’s just started to put a bit of belly weight on (uni weight!). He’s still generally slim though and the little pot belly will probably go away after he leaves uni (in 2 months!).
So what I’m saying is get the help now as it’s more likely your son will follow his trajectory (obviously if he’s 95 percentile for both then he’s just built in that way). It’s when there a mismatch it’s an issue.

Just be aware that a real registered professional is a Registered Dietician. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist as it’s not a protected title.

In our area they don't measure height at all at reviews (unless you are concerned) as it's so hard to do it accurately on babies and toddlers. If the height is wrong it will throw off the BMI figure. They just do weight centiles and if they go up (or down) across 2 centile lines on the chart you get referred.

Please don't decline the support. It can be difficult for non-experts to know what a healthy weight looks like. I was overweight as a child and into adulthood. My parents buried their heads in the sand and never gave me support to lose weight - they were overweight themselves so I suspect they just didn't see my "chubbiness" as an issue. It affected by confidence massively. Nip it in the bud as soon as you can.

I would suggest looking at pictures of yourself and your DH at 2. I worried so much about DD1 at this age and my MIL assured me that “this is just the way children in our family are”. I didn’t believe her but she was quite right, exactly as predicted she just sort of stretched out at 6.

I would go for the nutritionist. You have nothing to lose and potentially a lot to gain. It is possible that you are doing everything right and your DS is about to have a massive growth spurt. It is also possible that you are giving him the right diet but too much or it is possible that you think you are giving him the right diet but actually it needs some slight adjustments.

I assume he’s short if this is a problem? As most medical professionals wouldn’t refer if the parents are tall enough to justify it, I’d assume you are both below the 95% centile in height? If you guys are average to short you need to stop kidding yourselves that you are going to have a tall child or that his diet is healthy and start getting real advice.

A high slop (processed carbs like grain) diet might seem healthy but it’s fats, proteins, veg and wholegrains that give satiety. You also need to honestly review your child’s activity. At 2 I’d expect them to be running around and moving all or most of the day — if they can’t do that due to their weight you have a problem.