To think we have lost sight of what teh correct weight for a child is

[sassysally]

All these parents have gone, outraged to the mostly national press because they don't think their child has an ounce of fat on them, and the newspapers have published them,but to me are all clearly too heavy

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I don't know, you see. My dneice appears overweight, but my dsis does everything in her power...it's the same genetics as a slim child, but the other way round.

What do you think might be making him heavy spooky?

It's a genuine question by the way, but I fear it reads as a bit sarcastic even though it totally isn't

I find it all very confusing. My daughter, who is 3, looks chubby and my dsis has commented in the past that she looks a bit overweight, but, looking at her growth chart she is following her predicted line and has even dropped a centile for her weight. So is definitely not overweight. DS who is 5 has always been slim and looks slim yet has always been heavier than dd at the same age so I think there must be a difference in the muscle and fat ratios. Dd having more squishy chubby bits and ds, being a boy, having more lean muscle so looking leaner but weighing more.

worra I honestly don't know! I would say heavy bones maybe but know that sounds like the typical excuse overweight people use I am seriously not deluded, he really is not fat. He has a stocky, barrel-like chest but very skinny arms and legs. He is average height, fits in size 5-6 pants (he is 5.5).

I also seem to weigh 'above average' as in people my height and weight generally seem to be size 18/20 but I am a size 14-16 so maybe it is genetic?

I don't know but I do know it's confusing spooky. Maybe some people's bones and all the stuff inside, weighs more than other people's?

That would make sense.

DD (16) weighs average I think 5ft 4 about 8 stone - but she is stick thin, you can see her ribs, you can see the skin between her ribs moving as her heart beats

Anyone who sees her - comments on how thin she is

She is on 26th centile for BMI

But she weighs heavier because what little flesh she has is muscle & she exercises 18 hours a week

I got a letter from the school nurse because dd was deemed titchy when she was weighed at 4 years old. I had another letter when ds was deem overwieght at 11.

Lougle - the child's bmi calculator doesn't work like that, my DS2 has just turned 6 but is the same height as most 7 or 8 yos we know, if I put him in the calculator as 6 it shows him as 91st and at risk of becoming overweight but if he was 8 he is in the healthy range on the 82nd. His height and weight are on the same centile, he has broad shoulders, is muscular and has large feet.

I do think he could be thinner but he does an extreme amount of exercise each week so I am not worried.

Oh heck, I've just done 3 year old DS and he's only on the 3rd percentile. Is this bad? He was weighed at the GP's surgery recently and no one commented on his weight.

I think in children when the difference is so much smaller, just one or two pounds you can't tell by looking. It's silly to claim you think they look overweight. You are not their doctor so none of your business anyway.

Why do parents go to th papers about this poor children.

Why don't they read the letter, get a 2nd opinion from their gp and then try a bit harder to be healthy. Obviously the children are borderline/slightly overweight and are not being "labelled" for life. Making a fuss will just make for a confusing situation for the child.

sorry the 2 nd link was supposed to refer to the blond girl in the pink peppa pig top

My boys seem to chub up before a growth spurt. Their appetite noticeably increases and they don't seem to stop being 'starving' they get a bit soft then all of a sudden they look normal again and are back to eating normally - their bodies seem to self regulate what fuel they need.

They both walk a mile or so to school and back every day and play various sports at after school clubs. My eldest (11) is broad shouldered and heavier set (muscular legs etc as he trains and plays rugby twice a week), my youngest (9) is more compact and has a six pack (he trains and plays football twice a week and runs everywhere as fast as he can).

Just after Xmas we noticed that my eldest was getting on the chubby side so had a chat with him, explained it was nothing to get het up about but just to rein in the eating crap (he'd been stocking up on shit after school), and within a few weeks he was back to normal.

Unless my boys are little tubs of lard, rolling down the road, I will not make an issue of weight - I have lived my life on diets and yo yo weight and have ruined my body's self regulation. I much prefer to push the idea that exercise is good and fitness is the key; kids mostly get fat through not burning off enough energy imo.

Zanymobster - sounds like the same situation as we had with DS1. The age thing muddies the waters. If a child of 11, in our case, is the same height as a 13 yr old, why should he be judged to be overweight because alsohappens to be the same weight as a 13 yr old? You only had to look at him to see he was absolutely fine - ribs showing, no stomach and all that. A bit of common sense by the person doing the measuring wouldn't go amiss sometimes.

Just after Xmas we noticed that my eldest was getting on the chubby side so had a chat with him, explained it was nothing to get het up about but just to rein in the eating crap (he'd been stocking up on shit after school), and within a few weeks he was back to normal.

That's one of the most sensible things I've read in a long while.

I'm tired of reading people saying you should never mention a child's weight to them, in case it gives them an eating disorder.

I think it's nonsense. If we stop making weight a taboo subject and just treat it like any other natural part of life (which gaining/losing weight is), then hopefully children will learn to take responsibility once they're old enough to buy junk food etc, or stop taking as much exercise as they used to.

There are fully grown adults who still blame their own weight on being told they were overweight children...but how many future adults will blame it on not being told they were eating too much crap and taking too little exercise?

Once upon a time, parents would never discuss sex or drugs with their children in every day conversation...but thankfully that seems to be a more open subject in most families.

I'm hoping weight gain/loss/diet etc will become more open too in the future. It shouldn't have to be a difficult conversation imo.

BigBoobiedBertha They worry about an 11 year old being the height and weight of a 13 year old, because that means he is too big. An 11 year old should be the size of an 11 year old. Being over-high and over weight, in children, predisposes to obesity and other health problems in adulthood.

'But they are in proportion' does not take away that a child may be fat, and we have chance to do something about it. Why would a parent not take that chance, and instead bury their heads?

Nocheeseinhouse, how does someone stop their child from being overtall?

You said over-high and overweight pre-disposes to other things in adulthood, but how do you stop an 11 yr old being the same height as an average 13 yr old?

I know I am being facetious there, but can you not see the irony? Average is exactly that - average; some kids will be taller than the norm, some smaller - if the tall, average height and short child all weighed average weight, then surely the tall one is underweight and the short one is too heavy?

carabos I think that we actually get very mixed messages about health and obesity.
On the surface we get plenty of anti obesity messages. Government initiatives, tv programmes, studies, medical advice, news paper articles, public health messages -great!
Then you're confronted with a wall of chocolate at the checkout, confusing food packaging, endless adverts for junk, celebrity endorsements, 'treat yourself', junk masquerading as healthy food, large portions, pricing (20p extra to supersize) etc etc.
I'm not suggesting that there isn't a large element of agency in the food choices that we make, but if we struggle to navigate the aggressive advertising and (purposely) confusing nutritional information that we are overwhelmed with, it's our own fault and we are bad parents.
No acknowledgement that anyone is profiteering from this 'obesity epidemic' and no mention of the government reining this corporate behaviour in, rather than only concentrating on what we (the consumer/the public) should be doing better.

God, none are too heavy. None are skinny, but not too heavy. They seem to have good proportions.
(and I am very skinny and from a skinny family)

Also
An 11 year old should be the size of an 11 year old.
Children, as adults, are of different sizes. There is no "11 year old size", except on labels.

There have been a fair number of studies indicating that overweight and obese children tend to be taller than their peers in the early years leading up to puberty. Heights then tend to level out during the teenage years.
Having read a few of these studies the statistic that stuck out for me was that 60-70% of children who are overweight in childhood and have at least one parent who is overweight will become an overweight adult themselves.

I think we have lost sight of what is normal in both in children and adults. I don't kid myself that despite being a couple of stone heavier that I was in my 20's I am apparently the same clothes size.

nocheeseinthehouse - He wasn't 'too big' though. That is the point. His proportions were fine he just happened to taller than average and because there was more of him - more bone and muscle - he was heavier. The charts, not a sensible human, gave him a label because despite being in proportion he happened to be only 11 and not 13. The charts are statistics, they are based on a bell curve where most children fall in the middle at any given age but in order to be a curve there are a few that fall at the extremes and he was one of them.

I too would like to know how you propose to stop children being above average and growing. It might be that he is like his father. DH did exactly the same thing, went through puberty between about 10 to 12 yrs old which is earlier than most boys, and shot up in height so that he was the tallest in his year until he got to 13 when he stopped and everybody else caught up. DS is 13 now so we shall see if he grows significantly taller Like DS, DH wasn't fat either. DS's upbringing is very different from DH's so that pattern of growth and development is genetic. There was nothing we could have done about it. I am irritated that we got the letter without anybody bothering to actually look at DS and see he was slim but I am not silly enough to let it bother me nor to go to the papers. The letter went in the bin.

And just so I am not lumped in with the deluded ones, DS2 will also get a letter when he gets to yr 6 and I fully accept it is justified for him. He has been big since birth and nothing much seems to change that but there is no getting away from the fact he is overweight and it is something I do monitor.

I hate to see an overweight child but these children don't look overweight to me apart from some of the children in the collection of photos.
The first little girl could be my daughter at that age. She was always slightly overweight as a small child and ate hardly anything, she grew up to be very slim and have a good appetite.

And some children are thin on a bad diet too, which is also a health problem.

I just bought my 4.5 year old DS 2-3 school trousers in longer length, and they're still big in the waist. I have this problem in all high street kids clothes. My DS is 75th centile weight and height. What kind of waist size are they expecting kids to have??

I must admit that these days I would be slightly worried if a child fitted the waistband of clothes for their age. The waistbands on children's clothes seem to be huge now.

Even adult sizes have got bigger to allow for expanding waistlines. My 30 year old wedding dress is a size 12 and when my size 6 daughter tried it on a few years ago it really wasn't that much too big. It was probably a modern size 8/10.

Hebburn I have the same problem with buying trousers for my two boys; they are always too big on the waist. I now have to buy them either adjustable waist trousers and pull them right in or buy elasticated waist trousers with a small waist circumference.
I think any child who fits most of these high street rigid waist trousers must be overweight. The worrying thing is that many shops have started offering 'generous sized' school uniforms. If the normal sizes are already too wide for a healthy child then how big are the generous sizes?