to not want my child weighed

[moogster1a]

My ds has received a leaflet about the weighing of reception age kids in order to ascertain just how many Greggs sausage rolls are eaten in the neighbourhood. ( healthy child programme)
I didn't object too much to this although I think it's a huge waste of money and time as fat kids' parents will get a letter telling them their kid is fat and I fail to see where they will go from there. but, thats by the by.
the consent form states " If you do not return a completed consent form your child's vision and hearing will not be checked but we will still weigh and measure your child".
Does this mean there is no opt out?
Do all schools do this? It's getting me more and more annoyed that we are living in such a nany state. I would rather schools cocentrated on teaching my child how to read ad write rather than attempting to do the full pareting job icludig deciding how fat he can be. ( by the way, he's a skiny runt so I'm ot objecting because I think we'll be haued in frot of the lard police and told to empty our cupboards of everything but rye bread).
in fact, I lied earlier, I do object in principle to the whole scheme. What a waste of money.

I just want the money and time spent on the children who need it.

And how are you going to find out which children need it unless they are weighed? Or have their eyes tested? Or hearing tested?

Perhaps it should be like it was as my terrible village primary school- where the children from the well known 'rough' families and 'rough' areas were the only ones who got checked by the school nurse.

My DC are too old for the Reception weighing scheme, but I opted both of them out in Year 6. They don't keep records so can't track a child's gain during primary school anyway. DD1 would have been overweight, she's now 14, 5ft 6 and a size 10 so who cares?

I'd like to know how the hell some of you took your children to the opticians before school.

I had concerns about dd2 about 10 months before she started school, so I went to specsavers and another opticians who said they wouldn't test a preschooler. She's a September baby so the same age as some already in school, but that was their policy. They said she had to be referred to hospital by hv. Hv was off sick at the time, so it took a while to see them. Hv was very dismissive, did some rudimentary tests, and said she'd refer if I was really worried, but obviously thought I was making a fuss.

Had to take a day off work for the hospital appointment, who then decided that she ought to be seen by their chosen optician. However I couldn't go to the branch 10 mins walk from my house, but had to go to the only place that would see preschoolers which is 30 miles away. More time off work. If I couldn't drive, there's no way I could have got there, no bus service.

Her sight is extremely poor, and she got her glasses a couple of months ago. If I hadn't had major concerns there's no way I'd have got her tested before school.

really dealer? where i am i just walked into a local optician (NOT a big branch like specsavers) but a small local firm and said i wanted to book an eye test, i did it with my children before school age as i had worn glasses as a child.

it was fine, they booked it no problems, it was free as they were a child and they have letters, pictures, colours etc all sorts for them to look at to check their eyesight as well as using one of those machines so they can look into their eyes.

yabu

whats the big deal? your child is not obese

obesity is a huge problem, ha ha

we need a nanny state sometimes

My children have been having eye tests at Vision Express since they were 4. They have been brilliant- spotted a potentially serious problem with ds early enough tonimpressnthe consultant at the hospital, heldnoff prescribing glasses for dd as long as possible - and have really good frames.

YABU

I'm happy to have my children weighed at school.

And actually when I started to think dd was getting porky I took her to the doctor and had her weighed (and she was overweight).

Parents need to be told. There are some very overweight children in my area. They've done research showing that the majority of parents of overweight children were unable to identify what a healthy weight was.

Many parents think it's normal for children to have love handles and fat hanging over their trousers. They think their fat children are 'stocky', or 'big build'. Err no, they're fat. And you need to do something about it.

Every time these threads come up I want to bang my head repeatedly on a hard surface. I was a school nurse for a while and as such was part of a School Health Team that carried out growth and health assessments and monitoring in schools.

Schools don't weigh and measure children - School Health Teams do.

They don't give the child their measurements or (IME) make any comment about their height and weight. It's presented as 'we want to see how you are growing'.

The eye tests carried out are very basic and are no substitute for a proper assesment and eye test by a qualified optician, but they are a starting point and can be an early discovery tool for squints and short or long sightedness.

The hearing test is quite simple but again can be an indicator for further assessment.

All results were collated by the School Health Team staff and then those that were in any way out of the ordinary (ie underweight, overweight, poor vision or hearing) were passed to a qualified nurse for further intervention. This may have meant a return visit to the school to see the child/school staff to see if there were any other concerns about health, or a phone call to the parent to see if they had any worries about their child.

Often concerns with growth (especially obesity) could allow a parent to access services such as a MEND programme, or a dietitian or paediatric referral, where they hadn't previously known how to access them. The parent may have had a niggling worry about hearing or vision but again not known how to proceed further.

I think many MNers that post here forget that not all parents are as switched on as them, or as educated and informed as them. Some really do benefit and appreciate interventions from health professionals with issues flagged up at school screening.

All that said, I do think it is vitally important that parents can choose to opt out of screening, but I would hope that those that do are well informed as to just what they are opting out of. The OPs health forms are naughty in that they are implying that screening will be carried out regardless, which is wrong.

We actually amended our information and consent forms for parents so that they had to actually tick each box for the screening they consented to, ie height, weight, vision and hearing. That way we could be sure they had fully consented to all parts of the screening process.

dealer - Because I had eyesight problems (and my DH) my DCs were both referred for eye checks. We had letters for appointments at an Eye Clinic held at the local Health Centre, not an opticians. I'm glad you were persistant that she needed them checking. (What a palaver, though.)

My FIL has a lazy eye which was never picked up on, so became too late to be corrected. Apparently after about age 7, the brain is "fixed". I am very glad the children's eyes are checked in schools. There is a chance some eyesight problems may be missed if the child doesn't appear to be struggling.

My youngest has been referred to hospital to have his eyes checked for lazy eye as he wouldn't "pretend to be a pirate" and wear an eyepatch...

Back to the original OP - if they do not offer you the opportuntity to opt out, they are acting illegally. If they do not ask for explicit consent, they are acting contrary to their professional code of conduct, and could be struck off the nursing register.

It's only because I have major history of eye problems in my family that I knew what to look for. Her brother was also under the care of the hospital as a preschooler, but his eyesight has corrected now. He was referred as a young baby, so automatically went down the hospital route. I thought it was ridiculous that neither specsavers or the small local opticians would see a 4 yo though.

Now she has glasses, she is so much more confident. They are extremely strong, and the optician was astonished that her eye hadn't turned in considering. Her world must have been a blur before, no wonder she clung so much in strange places.

And bearing in mind this will be the first time parents will have contact with school nursing, they're not really getting off on the right foot with people by not asking for consent, are they?

I rejected the weighing thing , there should be a contact name/emal/telephone number to the PCT on the school letter.

I rejected simply because my then 6yo was 'chunky' - not fat, 'chunky', played sport constantly , but a bit 'chunky' nonetheless (built like rugby prop forward!!!). Now he's 15, he's 6'2", gone from a brick out-house to a typical cricketers build (and I dont mean Shane Warne!!!) no way would I have had him classified as 'fat' - which he probably would have been deemed as. We talk and know he will have a mid-life propensisty to 'love handles' if he doesnt watch his life style in adulthood.

I did the same for my No3 child - eats like a troughing pig and looks like a butchers pencil with the wood scraped off.

What pisses me off with these things is they go on mid centile averages. Being a tall 5'10", with a 6'1" partner and my side of the family is all over 6 foot, I was never going to have 'average' children. I threw one HV out of my house when she told me she had to report me for DS1 'being too tall for his age'.

DS2 was 6 weeks prem, 8lb and just over 24 inches. Never going to conform to the norm.

DS3 was 6 weeks prem, 6lb and 22 inches.

YANBU I seem to be in disagreement with all here but I don't agree with this program. I believe we are growing a generation of kids who are going to end up with eating disorders because there is too much hype about obesity. People got fat as a result of the diet industry and the obsession with food and weight is unhealthy. This weighing scheme is just adding to that. Its hard enough bringing up kids especially adolescent girls without seeing scaremongering about obesity around every corner. So I opted out and I do not appreciate schools getting involved with how I feed my family.

"I threw one HV out of my house when she told me she had to report me for DS1 'being too tall for his age'. "

No, she didn't.

Weighing children makes them fat? Pull the other one love, its got bells on.

Too much hype about obesity my arse...too much obesity is the actual problem.

There is too much obesity because a lot of the food that people (with low incomes or large families especially) can afford is filled with sugar, salt, fat and various chemicals. In some countries animals are filled with growth hormones and then consumed by people. No wonder we are getting fatter.

Weighing kids at school won't fix that - it will just make small children weight conscious, which they shouldn't be. I'm all for dc being taught about healthy choices but it would be better to stop manufacturers from filling their 'food' with crap and advertising it to children and selling it cheaply.

Really you shouldn't be able to buy processed food for less money than fresh food.

I rejected the weighing for my daughter bacause, although she is built like a whippet, she kept asking if she was fat and talking about diets - at 5 years old!! i simply wrote a letter to the school to say that I was refusing permission for her to be weighed. I also wrote a letter to the health team carrying out the weighing to say how concerned I was that a presumed lack of response was being interpreted as consent. Of course it was poo-pooed but I made my point. There should be written consent as there is for any other measurement, process and procedure in the NHS. Crikey, if the school want to take my child to the swimming pool a 2 minute walk away then I have to sign a form in triplicate so why this is any different I don't know.

Refusing consent makes so much more of a big deal of it than just with it! Oh I don think people are being a bit bonkers about this!

Im still wtf?'ing about the crap relating to buttered toast

Me too. Interesting that the pedlar of that particular insanity didn'tncome back to defend it.

Me too Laptopdancer. I like that having an expert brother somehow confers expertise by proxy too, I wonder if I could start designing boats like my engineer brother?

We got told that my DS is 1 pound overweight, not that it was mentioned as a problem but they told me his weight at the hospital clinic and I saw on the charts that it is apparently 1 pound overweight.

He swims twice a week, does athletics twice a week for an hour at a time - he runs 1 mile during his "training" and does 600 metre races, long jump, hurdles etc etc. He also plays football once a week and spends the rest of his time playing out on his bike, on the trampoline etc etc.
The asthma nurse who he sees regularly says it is a load of nonsense and that he is fine - he has clothes for 8 years (he is nearly 7) because of his height and I have to tighten the waist band to the tightest setting and put a belt on him. Waist wise, he can still fit into age 5 to 6 clothes so I take no notice.
He's on the 95th percentile for height and the 70th for weight so I think he's fine.

I just let them weigh him.