To be really annoyed with the NHS for their BMI checker?

[kw1986]

Now I know my 3yo DD is healthy so I was just checking out of curiosity to see what her BMI was. Shes 3ft 3in and weighs 3st 1lb... Put all the details in and up it pops saying she is OBESE purely because she's in the 99th percentile!! Since when the fuck does that make you obese???

If I work out her actual BMI number it's 19.4 which falls into the normal range (lower normal actually)

Now what if some parent who doesn't know this is a pile of shit actually thinks their child is obese and starts cutting down on food etc? Its made me quite irrationally angry really. They are the NHS for petes sake, surely they should know better. (Prob doesnt help for the entire first year of DD's life I had a stupid HV that kept telling me DD was too heavy despite being on the same percentile for her weight AND height, and also her head circ.)

AIBU to be so annoyed right now?

www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/Healthyweightcalculator.aspx

This business about children should have their ribs, hipbones and spine sticking out. Like, really sticking out? I would think a child was too thin if all their bones were very clearly sticking out all over.

Not sticking out Sardine, but visible.

For bones to be visible, ie you can count the ribs and see the nobbles in the spine then they must be sticking out? If they weren't sticking out you wouldn't be able to see them IYSWIM.

If I imagine a person with hipbones, spinal bobbles and ribs all visible then i am imagining someone pretty darn thin TBH.

I don't even remember my friends bones being visible in the 70s TBH. With my children if they bend in a certain way you can see their bones, but I wouldn't be able to count their ribs and their spinal nobbles while they were just standing there. I don't think they're too fat but of course I could well be wrong.

Are you really sure OP that you are not in denial? I have read somewhere that a lot of parents just don't realise when their child is overweight, they just can't see it.

My dd is 5 years old, weighs a stone less then your child and is the same height.

I think it can be very hard to see in your own child, but it's something we have to be more aware of.

Op my ds is 7 in July and weighs exactly 3 stone.

Bones sticking out to some extent depends on body type too, I'm not convinced it's an accurate measure of how fat someone is.

My friend has a very slim upperbody, prominent collarbones, visible ribs and vertebrae but wears size 16 trousers.

My spine, at an individual bone level, has never been visible and my hip bones didn't appear until I was a teenager and the same applies to my children. They're not carrying excess fat although I suspect on paper it would look like they were. They're just heavy as they take after me and my partner.

My bmi is over 25, I'm not fat and I'm not in denial (pic on profile) about myself or my children.

<a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=3.bp.blogspot.com/_iKcZ3qcCmyo/S83JbEMbEaI/AAAAAAAAQ64/_XSQx0iAJho/s1600/fat_thin.jpg&imgrefurl=deathby1000papercuts.com/2010/04/the-progressive-politics-of-childhood-obesity-and-hunger/&usg=__Nk7UrVVv4Fxq17em9JxQExOJ4Vo=&h=349&w=470&sz=35&hl=en&start=20&zoom=1&tbnid=xIPaeTigYC5HdM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=170&ei=DKHKTYzGI4bOsgbrq9iHAw&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dskinny%2Bchildren%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DX%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D634%26tbm%3Disch0%2C684&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=123&vpy=279&dur=238&hovh=193&hovw=261&tx=126&ty=101&page=2&ndsp=22&ved=1t:429,r:15,s:20&biw=1280&bih=634" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">This picture, whilst not great, gives an idea of body shapes.

So for eg if they were numbered 1-5 left to right then 1 and 2 look to be a normal weight for their height. 3-5 look increasingly overweight. But IME many parents would consider number 3 to be "normal".

Sardine, quick googel trying to find who said it but just found this which discusses how parents look at weight isuues and also quotes:
My colleague Jack Lowe, a pediatrician with 38 years of primary care experience in both private and public settings, quipped one day, ?You should be able to see ribs in any kid less than 10 years old.? Considering this simple rule in my pediatric practice, I have found it to be largely true, that buried ribs were almost always obscured by excess fat. Abdominal circumference as a single measure may turn out to be a useful way of assessing adiposity but has not yet been standardized for use among large numbers of children. Compared with BMI, waist measurement would likely prove easier to communicate to parents, because it represents something tangible and visual, something you could literally get your hands around.

google even

OP are you sure the figures you've got are correct? I can't believe you'd not notice a child being that big and still think she was a healthy weight.

This article is very interesting

It talks about the use of the word solid and having a healthy diet etc.. even when the child is developing/has developed a weight problem.

My children are on the 65th and 70th centile for their weight v height - and I can see their ribs clearly.

Also I think comments about how much other children the same age weigh aren't necessarily helpful. For eg my DD is 3 and weighs only marginally less than the OPs - however her BMI comes out as in the middle of healthy range. I know that she is fine, she's just big. 3 foot 6 and has size 11 feet!

smallprint the idea upthread was that you ought to be able to see ribs, spine and hip bones. I think that while on many healthy children their bones might be visible, to say that all of those must be visible when the child is at rest might lead some parents with actually healthy children to think that they are overweight. As with all things, different people are different and there will always be exceptions to blanket rules.

Certainly you could not count the ribs on my children nor the spinal nobbles. You can see their rib and spine bones easily when they bend and stretch but at rest they would not be pronounced enough for that. I haven't noticed their hipbones one way or another!

DD is 66th centile and you can't see her ribs clearly, nor her spine nobbles.

Different people are built differently.

66thb centile on that NHS BMI calculator thingy anyway. Don't know about height v weight.

It makes no difference what you say about other sized children, whether or not you like BMI, whether you think they should have ribs like a xylaphone, anything. The point is that OP's child is very heavy for her height. She is obese, end of story. Prattling on about the rest of it makes no difference to that reality, and its better that parents wake up to this.

It seems a bit extreme that it can go from middle of normal to obese, for the sake of 3 inches one way and 4 pounds the other. Sure it's a difference, but from totally healthy to dangerously obese?

BMI is used differently for children. It is calculated the same way as for adults, but then compared to typical values for other children of the same age. Instead of set thresholds for underweight and overweight, then, the BMI percentile allows comparison with children of the same sex and age.

A BMI that is less than the 5th percentile is considered underweight and above the 95th percentile is considered obese for people 20 and older. People under 20 with a BMI between the 85th and 95th percentile are considered to be overweight.

That's interesting. So it's not a set cut-off. How does that work then as the population gets heavier? Wouldn't this method have put completely different children in the overweight category 20 years ago?

It doesn't though, there is a whole band of overweight before you get to obese, and the healthy weight is pretty wide. If it says obese, it means it. No way is 4 pounds the difference between "healthy weight and dangerously obese", it doesn't work like that.

neversaypie I just put my DD in and she is middle of normal, then put OPs DD and result is obese. Difference is OPs DD is 3 inches shorter and 4 pounds heavier. I know that they're little children and it is a reasonable difference on a young child but from middle normal to obese seems a very big difference.

If you don't think she's overweight OP, take her to your GP. But I suspect you know she's overweight really - why were you checking otherwise? This is a good time to sort it out, before she starts school.

Please talk to your GP - they can help you to help her deal with it now before it becomes a longterm issue. Three is still young enough to turn it around :)

That's a good question SQ as the nations size increases including children comparative distinctions won't work as well.

But I believe that the typical values are accumulated values rather than only values of each generation individually. So we can see that children are larger than they were before.

Don't know what you're looking at, but my calculator says OP's child would need to be at least 8 pounds lighter to be in the normal range.

Its a combination thing, 3 inches is a lot to grow, and its age too.