To bin this letter and not ring them about DS?

[Oddthomas]

Got a letter about 4yo DS today. He was weighed and measured last month at school (yes, it's one of those threads). The letter says he is overweight :( It lists the dangers of being overweight with the line "you are putting your child at risk of..." and finishes with the sentence "to obtain support on what to feed your child please contact..." and the phone number for the nurse who visited the school. Also enclosed was a change 4 life leaflet.

I sat and I read the leaflet and there is nothing in there that we don't already do. He gets at least five portions of fruit and veg a day. He has at least 60 minutes of exercise (usually more as school alone is a 20-30 minute walk each way and he's always in the garden on his trampoline or scooter, rain or shine). He doesn't have fizzy drinks (despite his best efforts to persuade me that all of his friends do) and I don't keep sweets in the house, gets them now and then as a treat, generally when we visit grandparents.

He's always been on the high end of the charts, 95th percentile at birth and stayed there right through his baby and toddlerhood. He's a solid little thing but when he's got his top off I can see ribs and the knobs of his spine, he doesn't have any rolls, has just the one chin, and he's in the appropriate clothing sizes (a mix of 3-4 and 4-5).

Yesterday he ate:

• breakfast: blueberry wheats (like shredded wheat with blueberry filling) in one of the kids bowls with semi-skimmed milk. A banana.
• lunch: cheese and tomato sandwich (one slice of bread, folded over and then cut in two), sliced apple, sliced red and yellow pepper. A seafood stick. Three pieces of tuna and vegetable sushi.
• dinner: chicken and mushroom tagliatelle with broccoli and sweetcorn in a homemade garlic cream sauce (garlic, herbs, low fat creme fraiche).

Drinks: glass of milk with lunch, the rest of the day either plain water or very weak sugar free squash. He has a drinks bottle that we top up as needed so he always has a drink available. We went to the park in the morning, walked there and back, and to a softplay after dinner.

Today, so far, he has had marmite on toast (two slices from one of those mini-sized 400g loaves), a satsuma, an apple and tuna pinwheels for lunch (tuna in a flour tortilla with mixed leaves, rolled up and sliced). Dinner tonight is going to be Spag Bol, lean steak mince with homemade sauce and hidden veg. We're about to head to the adventure playground for the afternoon.

This is all pretty typical fare. At school he has school dinners. Typical menus include pizza and wedges with carrot sticks followed by cake and custard or breaded chicken pieces (nuggets then?) with potatoes and seasonal vegetables followed by cake and custard. I'm now considering putting him on packed lunch instead!

He seems healthy enough to me, I'm not filling him full of shit and he never sits still and I mean never, he's a fidgeter. My siblings and I were all solid children, when I compared DS to photos of me and my siblings at the same age we all have a similar build, and we all stretched out around about when puberty hit.

AIBU to just bin this letter? Or should I be paying attention to their chart rather than the child in front of me?

He sounds heavy. I would take him to the GP for a second opinion like greylady's daughter did. Then you can have a dialogue about it, much better than a standardised letter that is not individual to your child. Is he active at home as well as when he's out and about? My kids eat healthy but also eat biscuits, chocolate, chips and pizza , however, they are both very, very active. Not sporty at all, but on the go so much. They eat sweets and chocolate as treats (apart from in the holiday where it all goes to rot...) DD (5) is 118cm and 19kg. DS (7) is 134 cm and 27kg. Neither looks particularly skinny.

It's a shame we can't have a crystal ball so we can see how they'll turn out weight-wise.

Both mine were whoppers as babies (DS 10lb 6, DD 10lb 3) but they are both now very slight as teenagers. Around age 4-5 was when they started to slim down, though they both ate the same amount as they always did before that age.

It's all a bit of a lottery, really.

He's very active at home. I know people say their child never sits still but he really never does, there is always some part of him moving, usually all of him but even when his bottom is on a seat his hands are going or his feet or both. We walk virtually everywhere too, the corner shop is a quarter mile away so even just nipping out for bread/milk means walking him a half mile there and back and there's a little playground on the way which he won't pass without going in for a play. Most days by around 6pm I think to myself "how are you still going?!" and his energy levels increase when he's tired! He gets to the point where he knows if he sits still he will fall asleep so he goes manic with the activity levels in order to stay awake.

Out of the home he's wild, but in a good way not an unruly way. One of the reasons I like taking him to the park is because he just runs around and around. We can be there for hours and he won't sit down the whole time. We went to the big park today and he was all over it, climbing everything, chasing other kids, making it is his mission to go on every piece of equipment.

I wish I had half his energy :o

I was thinking that kelpeed. I looked at the menus and out of the fifteen school days in the three week rota they have pizza three times, chips or wedges ten times (!!), and a chocolate based pudding six times. It seems a bit excessive to me. I have nothing against these foods, last week he had a Happy Meal after softplay but it was the first one he'd had for ages and in all probability it'll be ages until his next one, he has sweets and things now and then as treats so I don't ban junk but he would get pizza every week at home, nor would he have chips/wedges ten days out of every fifteen or a chocolate pudding twice a week.

Actually that's what I'm going to do, switch him to packed lunch and then weigh him again at the next half term to see what the difference is. If the difference is huge I'm going to raise it with the governors, although it'll be interesting to see what the new menu being offered from September will be.

*wouldnt get pizza

avoid school dinners. I think your packed lunches will be healthier.

My 3 year old is on the 50th for hight and weight. He definitely looks stocky and solid. I think he would look a bit chubby if heavier.

My other DS's are perfect 70's kids. Skinny

I'm expecting to have this with DS2.

DS1 is like a little whippet - around about 50th centile for height (although seems to go up and down a lot) and below 25th Centile for weight. He's easily the skinniest child in his class.

DS2 has also been very variable for height (between 75th centile and off the charts) but weight is always up around the 90s. Everyone is always surprised how heavy he is as he's bigger built than his brother, but still looks slimmer than average. He's clearly got very heavy bones, or has consumed some lead weights at some point in the last two years.

I agree with binning the school dinners. His diet sounds really good as does his activity levels. The only place es getting the crap and empty calories is at school.

secret eaters is a revelation to me. so much literal denial and emphasis on eating healthily. you can still be fat through eating non-processed food.

the issue could be portion size. that sounds a lot of food!
or a mis-weighing?

but 95 centile for weight makes him heavier than almost every other child his age

Oddthomas Tue 15-Apr-14 19:29:55

I posted what sort of portion sizes he has in the post at that time/date. Are they too big?

And for comparison I weighed/measured my 2yo who eats the same diet but without the school dinners. She's 9th percentile for weight and 25th for height so if it was my food and portions were making him overweight surely she'd be overweight too?

DS1 was always active like that - constant fidgeting, bouncing all over the place etc. He could easily put away as much food as me and was always around 75th centile for height and 50th for weight.

He's 10, now, and starts the day with a massive breakfast - he's growing such a lot. I thought he was beginning to look a bit heavy rather than the skinny boy he's always been but, no, he was weighed by his consultant a couple of weeks ago (needs to be for his ADHD medication) and he's still 75th/50th! He does appear to be entering a phase where the clothes he's only had for a few months are all getting too small, mind, so he might have been proportionally heavier for a while before he was weighed. His centiles have always matched before a growth spurt, but those growth spurts have recently gone from being annual to every few months!

If your DS is so active, then the weight could easily be muscle. Changing from school dinners sounds like a good plan, as he seems to need much more protein dense food than he's getting there.

it sounds quite a lot for a 4 year old but of course he is not getting snacks in between meals.
but 95 centile and 60 for height is big

If schools had been doing this when DS1 was a child, they'd have been riding my arse about him from day 1. He was a big fat lazy baby and a big fat active kid. He was on the 95th centile for height and weight, so according to the chart he followed his curve and was in proportion - except he wasn't, he was fat. He remained fat big even after discovering rugby in secondary school.

Today he's 6ft 1, still a rugby player, but rippling muscle. My point is that it's impossible to know how they will turn out, so probably not a good idea to ignore.

my kids all eat the same. two are skinny, one is podgy. guess it is partly metabolism, but we have to work with that. portion size.

still think it is worth a re-weigh. mistakes happen

ds2 was obese on most of the childhood charts.

He is still (at 16) overweight according to the current charts.

But he is, and always was, solid muscle. He plays about 20 hours of sport a week, and never ever sits still. There is practically no fat on him at all, he just has massive hands and feet, solid bone structure and loads of muscle.

Ironically dd used to come up as a healthier weight on the charts, despite being clearly overweight through much of her childhood. She was much less active, and presumably had less muscle.

The one size fits all approach to measuring weight is bonkers.

DS got one of these letters in reception, I binned it after asking the GP who he told me there was no way DS was obese.

He was also 99th percentile at birth for weight and height and stayed that throughout babyhood (exclusively bf), toddlerdom and pre-school. He is now 6 years old and had become much less 'bulky' - he's still well built in terms of broad shoulders etc (I blame his professional rugby player dad for that) but is skinny with it - can see ribs when he is standing normally.

Until reception he was always taller and bulkier than his cohorts, but now he isn't the tallest, and definitely isn't the bulkiest.

Not sure what you mean by "empty calories" in a school dinner, giles.

That usually means calories from fizzy drinks and sugary sweets, where there is little substance but plenty of calories. They're never allowed in a school dinner.

School dinners are carefully planned to meet a child's food requirements, whereas packed lunch will inevitably end up being what the child likes. I work in a school and I see all sorts in packed lunch boxes, including, once, cold burger and cold chips .

The other advantages of school dinners are (a) they encourage your child to eat what they're given once a day for 39 weeks a year and (b) they'll be free for KS1 from September.

Please think hard about giving them up, OP. You don't know for sure it's the packed lunch - talk to your GP first.

I honestly think some children are just built like bricks. DS has always been under the 50% centile for height but at one point was over the 91st for weight . He's now down to just over the 75th but he's just very solid.

At one weigh-in at the dreaded baby clinic the nursery assistant plotted his weight and told me to put him on semi-skimmed milk but the HV took one look at him and said he was fine. He's just got a chunky build, wide back, big head etc and at 9 months old his chest measurement was the same as DD who was 2.6.

If you look at the ops post though dr dates there's ten lots of chips and pizza in a three week rotation. And a lot of chocolate pudding.

That's not exactly good

It states

I would try a wheat free diet, as every meal has a lot of wheat in it and our bodies struggle to digest it.

Would never touch anything sugar free too, the fake sugars made in a lab are far far far more harmful than sugar.

giles, I'm wondering what LA the OP is in, because there's no way ours would serve chips of wedges ten times in 15 days.

The menu for my LA is here. As you can see, it explodes the myth about them serving chips and stodge every day.