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?????

micro thanks, yeah it's under control I'm a size 6 but by no means unhealthy. We were weighed and told the amount, I naturally dropped about 6kg in my first term through adjustment (a lot for my size but through more sport, less food, not a problem) and from then would never let myself gain weight. We were weighed at the beginning and end of each term and I went consistently down for years. Their way of dealing with this was to sit and try to make me eat cheese on toast - anyone who's ever had food issues will appreciate the horror of this. I still don't eat bread, pasta, cheese etc ever and potentially triggered by that.

I'll tell you why I excluded my year 6 dc fom this, and that's that I just could not face another patronising lecture from a so-called health professional who appears to lack the ability to look around him/herself and notice that actually, people come in all shapes and sizes and that for some strange reason human beings do not necessarily stick to the theory of growth charts. If I had taken all the conflicting advice that had been given me to do with my dc's weight and height over the years, I would have gone completely round the bend.

I have 2 dc now aged 11 and 14, they have been treated exactly the same, they eat the same - all healthy stuff - they do the same exercise. One is like a beanpole, like his dad, one is a bit overweight, like me .

Grrrrr!

in our schools we have children with anorexia at the age of 8 (according to today's DM)

enough to avoid programmes like this

I refuse for dd or ds for that matter. Both are slim and athletic.

If the govt need stats as evidence that children are over weight then god help us.

If they want to sort out obesity they could buy back some playing fields, re-introduce robust pe in ordinary years and stop the fucking stupid low fat method of ' healthy eating' . And possibly pay a bit more attention to the shit that manufacturers can put in products aimed primarily at children.

But that's just me.

Pag, great post. Couldn't agree more.

I think this is quite a useful exercise, we need information in order to direct policies/research. The Earlybird study in Plymouth which has been following children since they were small (and are now teens) showed that parents could not recognise when their own children were obese (probably because being larger has been normalised) and I think the whole country needs a bit of a wakeup on this.
My own dd was weighed and the children in her class did talk about it in quite an open way

pagwatch: this sort of child surveillance began long before any concerns about obesity (quite the opposite in the immediately post-war years). It has been a valuable source of information on children's growth for many decades.