year 6 were weighed and measured this week. two of the children had parents who refused to allow this. AIBU this draws morea ttention to it

[slartybartfast]

one of them is definately over weight.
i assume her mum didnt want a lecture or advice.
one looks big built, not necessarily over weight,

but only these 2 in the whole class of 30 were singled out as not being weighed.

my dd nor her friends know their weight and height, it will be sent to parents in a letter.

but why on earth wouldnt you want your child to be weighed in this case?????

We'll get round the consent issue by holdig up a bottle of expensive perfume, asking "would you like a sample" and when they say yes we SLAP it on :o

sorry...getting carried away now!

If the government isnt funding dietetic support Id like to thank whoever that is thats paying my wages each month.

Some areas have the most obese children because their parents feed them shit and they don't get enough exercise. A letter home saying you're child is overweight is not going to change the vast majority of people's eating habit if all they are used to doing is chucking some chicken nuggets and chips in the oven.

Same as a lot of healthy eating policies in schools.

no one going for my M&S idea?
You might be pleased to know I have been banned from all M&S stores within a 50 mile radius
Am starting on John Lewis next...

If the government want to get kids fit and healthy they could start with making the streets safer. lock up all the criminals and thugs. light up all public areas and make them pleasant. Put police back on the streets day and night.
Ensure that playing fields are not sold off. Ensure that forrests, parklands and woolands are keep free (or near as damn it) for all.
Provide tennis courts, swimming pools and other sporting arenas at a very reasonable cost.

Make fruit, vegetables, good cuts of meat and fish as cheap as pop, crisps and all other "crap" foods which incidentally always seem to be so much cheaper that decent food. Why is it more expensive to buy good quality fish/meat and veg and fruit than say a processed meal and a cake????
Why is a joint of top quality beef never on BOGOF whilst crisps and pop are??????????????

We should also begin to instil in children that it really is ok to win-oh sorry a very un pc idea hence why the uk is so crap at most sports compared with countries who hold a different outlook.

Weighing year 6 kids? complete lip service to the real issues. What good is weight without measuring bone mass and knowing exact body type? 2 children the same height can both be healthy yet weigh differently due to muscle, body type bone mass etc.

DD in reception seems to have avoided this but I would refuse.

BMI - one size doesn't fit all. It is totally meaningless for my DD as she is missing a limb. So yes I know she is underweight for her height but obviously because she is missing a bit - handy tips to ensure I am not starving her are not needed.

Yes my DD is an extreme example but lots of children have disabilities or medical conditions.

agreed mum in the middle - the borough I live in has high level of childhood obesity but as stated earlier in the thread is planning to change a really lovely playing field used for football practice to a cemetery as not enough space to bury the dead.

The borough also has a very middle class enclave - presumably with no obese children but possibly with many with eating disorders (before I get flamed that was said tongue in cheek but think there might be research to back it up). No culling of the parks there!!

Anyway I think that the key to tackling this in general is not as simplistic as simply weighing children and then writing to tell parents or is to just say eat healthily and exercise more.

Because if it was as simple and easy as that then diets would work and trust me they don't

Why are we weighing all kids together all of a sudden? Smacks of measuring noses and trundling off to a shower if you ask me...So the fucking goverment know more about raising my child than me do they? []angry]

Oh christ read the thread.....

muminthemiddle why should the govenment do any of those things if they don't have the stats to tell them if obesity is a problem or not, and which areas its a bigger problem in and if it is more or less of a problem than other things like knife crime or STIs or underage pregnancy?

Do you think they should just guess which social problems need addressing or do you think they should do the reasearch so they have the figures?

"northwestnutrition Sat 05-Mar-11 18:22:01

Dont you realise they actually collect all weights, not just the high ones? If there showed to be a national underweight issue, the same would apply re health promotion funding."

All children are weighed but parents of underweight children are not contacted as are parents of overweight children (read my previous post). If you do weigh children out ouf concern for their health you have to be concerned by all children whose weight is not matching their height, not just the overweight ones.

"parents of underweight children are not contacted"

They are where I live.

All the parents were given a letter with the actual measurements and the BMI percentile and told if that was within the normal range, overweight or underweight. Its probably quite unusual to be underweight but my friends ds was. She already knew he was and he was 'under the doctor' but it was still pointed out.

Nothing was sent to us for DD, maybe different from an area to th other?

Also back to OP, parents of overweight children have decided that their dcs should not be weighed might mean that they are indeed well aware that their Dc is ooverweight/obese but do not want them to be "stigmatised" about it in school? I am thinking that a parent unaware would have let their child be weighed and maybe complained afterwards that "my child is NOT overweight!" this is just speculation though.

If kids are going to get teased about their weight after the measuring exercise, they were going to be teased about something anyway.

I can't believe that all it takes is one letter suggesting your child might be fat for a parent to over-react and go over-board and set up their child with food-related issues for life; I humbly submit that same parent was bound to over-react to something anyway, sooner rather than later.

I was on the other side of this... I got a letter saying DS weight was okay but I reckoned that was too optimistic, he was obviously veering towards chubby. He's slimmed down a bit, since. I made a lot of active effort to achieve that.

We don't have person scales in the house, I found it useful to find out what DS weighed because no other way I could get that info so easily.

"If kids are going to get teased about their weight after the measuring exercise, they were going to be teased about something anyway."

Yes so let's just give children more amunition?

Gorione: notifications: yes, this does vary between health authorities.

I hate the idea of giving them extra ammunition, too, Gorionine. But the reality is that the popular fat/skinny kids will barely hear a word of sharp criticism from their peers, and the unpopular kids who are just a bit podgy will get slated constantly. So the real problem is in the children's social hierachy and culture of picking on each other, not in the measuring itself.

I tend to agree with you but was thinking it might have been the reason why the parents might have withdrown their DCs from the programm. If your child is teased because they have a long nose for example, you will not send them to school with a t-shirt saying "look at my nose!" so I assume if your children are being teased for being overweight you do not want this to become "official" even if you are well aware of it yourself.

When my ds was weighed, every child's parent received a letter with the summary.

The reason I withdrew was that I already think girls (I had 2 older girls when I got the letters) are too worried already over their weight. DD came home with the letter and jumped straight on the scales and worried she would be declared 'fat' at school weigh in time. She is very slim. I opted out as I saw the effect on DD, why should she worry over her weight? I knew she wasn't fat and am quite capable of monitoring her weight if I am worried which i am not.

After they got weighed, all the girls were comparing their weights. A friend said at her school, a boy was crying in the queue as people were laughing that he would be fat for sure..It is only confidential if the kids don't discuss it afterwards, often they do.. I will be opting out for any subsequent child as well as I think it is a daft and intrusive idea.

It's like someone of an Ethnic minority objecting to ticking a box stating their Ethnicity...and then complaining there is no provision for them in the area in which they live. Of course their wouldn't be, if there were no statistics how could their be?

Equally, the Government need to know which areas have the most obese children in them..and then they can start to work out why and try to make a difference.

So how does that the white british if they don't tick the box?

In the same way how does it effect the slim children if they don't tick the box?

Why not instead pull out the obese children and educate their parents in how to feed them and start with the root of the problem not worry about surprises in 20 years time with sorting statistcs.

(bangs head) That's what they are doing ivy the parents are sent the results so they can either do something about it or disbelieve and ignore it.

Jellybeans: that sounds dreadful.

But it's mismanagement in that particular setting, not an inherent problem with the (very long standing) system. Your friend might like to talk to that school about its individual handling to encourage them to do it better in future years.

I refused permission for my daughter to be weighed in reception. She is nowhere near being overweight - in fact she's very slim and athletic but already at 5 and 6 I hear girls including her talking about being fat and needing to diet. I didn't think she needed anything else to worry about. The letter was also given at very short notice and didn't require actual parental permission. They assumed that if you didn't reply (or reply in time) you were happy. I work for a Uni and if you tried to do anything with children on an assumed consent basis you wouldn't make it out of ethics committee. So there was a principle involved as well. The letter said that the results would be sent to the child's GP so it would be on their medical records and all this can happen without you actively giving consent for it. I also think that the wrong messages are given out about food. We have no 'bad' foods in our house, only foods you should eat more of and foods you eat less of. So chips aren't bad they're just a food you shouldn't eat very often. But when both of my children come home from a healthy eating lesson they're chatting away about 'good' food and 'bad' food and I have to start all over again. We do need to get a handle on the obesity thing but I'm not sure that weigh-ins with no follow up and labelling foods 'bad' is the way to do it.

I wish I knew the school was doing this when DD1 was younger. I would have refused. The children compared weights and DD1 was the heaviest, not that surprising considering she was considerably taller than any other child. She was teased and was upset by the whole experience. Her BMI has always been on the low side so being overweight had nothing to do with it.