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 do often wonder what size a child would need to be to fit into clothes without adjustable waists.

DS is 4.5 and I have just had to get him 18-24 month shorts for pre-school as even the 3-4 (smallest school shorts I could find) fell off when on the tightest.

I find this with dd. She's 7 and a half and still wears some clothes made for 5 yr olds. All depends on where they are from. Tesco used to come up massive. Some clothes dd never wore as they never fitted

If a 4.5 year old can fit into 18-24 month shorts and them not be too short for him, then no wonder the age 3-4 shorts were falling off him tbh.

As a child gets taller, their waist etc gets bigger (generally), every child is different and every child has a different shape and proportions - my 2 boys have completely different body types.

(Am not deluded re waist size on trousers either, I always get adjustable waist on everything as the waist always needs taking in initially - as the trousers are getting too short, this is when the waist needs adjusting outwards).

But he is the height for 3-4 clothes but the waists on many are too big even adjusted. He is perfectly in the middle of normal weight range for his height.

The baby shorts thing is a red herring - trousers and shorts under age 2 are made for a nappy underneath, and babies are a different shape to children - my 8 year old could fit into her youngest brother's soft, elastic waisted size 18 month shorts last summer - this amused her greatly, though they looked like oddly shaped knickers and obviously she didn't wear them out of the house :o She could suddenly fit back into her own young toddler stuff when we sorted out out to give away when she was 5.... even though she had once grown out of it. She is average build, maybe slim, but not at all unusual - 50th centile for everything (which according to this thread makes her fat, in fact, though people constantly, and to my deep discomfort, tell her how slim she is).

It would worry me as well. My own child fits into the ones for his age now that do not have an adjustable waist band but he's already X and 1/2 so I reckon that's OK. He needed a belt before hand. He's just grown out of the adjustable waistband ones for the size that he had had last year.

Child 1 and 3 are more or less normal for age group, as far as I can see.
About half the kids in the Google images picture were genuinely obese and need medical supervision to address this, IMVHO.
I am a qualified teacher, btw, so have had experience of lots of different types and shapes of kids.

My DS was on the 9th percentile for the first 18 months of his life. My family all have small babies, it was perfectly normal for us. I was told by a HV I needed to give him special milk to fatten him up (which I refused as he was EBF) I was told my MIL that he was obviously ill because he was too thin. I was told by friends that his face looked chubby and that he was a little 'podge'. At all of those times, he was on the 9th. It is completely in the eye of the beholder and these stories are always in the press.

A female weightlifter was told last week that she was overweight (in the metro) and in for athletes, BMI can be a poor indicator of fitness. BUT none of these children are athletes and its stories like that, that make people disbelieve health professionals when they are told their child is overweight.

DD is on the chubby side for sure, However she eats really well and always does lots of exercise. Shes 8 and the height, and weight of a 12 year old.
In her class she looks HUGE, stick her next to children the same height, and she looks normal.

The age thing does come into play, childrens BMI is not just height v weight. Its height, age and weight.

I sought doctors advice on this and was advised to opt out of any school weighing programme as DD would not fare well, being a child so out of ' adverage' and frankly, being a head a shoulders above her peers already, she doesnt need anything else making her feel she is different.

Her dad is 6'5. Shes going to be like him, her shape is the same as his, he is very very long in the body. Her waist is not reached by most clothes as the crotches are so shallow, they all sit on her hips, which is wider that her waist and also means she needs bigger clothes.

My step brother was a right little chubber when he was young, right until he was about 14. he had such a round, moon face and i remember him crying a lot about being bullied for being fat. He didnt eat badly. He didnt change his diet, but puberty kicked in and hes now a beanpole, 6'7 giant.

All children are different.They grow at different rates. As long as they arent scoffing down crap all day, every day, then i think people should just leave them be. This constant need to measure, test, compare at every stage of their life is just going to do so much damage in the long run.

I have 2 tall children. Neither are overweight but Ds in particular has always been off the chart in relation to his height, while maintaining weight at about 75th centile. According to this thread, they are overweight because they are tall. I had rather put it down to the fact that their father is 6'8 and that genetics played a large part in predicting their height.

Please explain, how do I stop my children growing?

As long as they arent scoffing down crap all day, every day, then i think people should just leave them be.

But its isn't just 'crap' thats the problem. Too much food whether good or bad can cause weight gain.

Some people appear to believe that you/a child can eat as much as you like as long as it is deemed healthy but healthy food still contains calories so you can still over eat on it.

I'm starting to wonder whether the reason most of us find it confusing about these children not 'looking' overweight is because on children the margins are a lot smaller.
Therefore if a child is carrying a small amount of extra weight it actually has a bigger effect then on an adult.
I don't think YABU entirely as I think as a society we have lost sight of what a healthy weight is for everyone and I include myself in that.

As long as they arent scoffing down crap all day, every day, then i think people should just leave them be.

You don't have to be scoffing down crap every day to be overweight. Weight isn't determined by what you eat but rather how you eat. You can eat very healthy but still be overweight if you're still eating too much and taking in more calories than you need. Likewise you can scoff crap every day and still be slim as long as you're not eating more calories than you need.

It's amazing how many people seem to think that because they eat healthy then it means they can't possibly be overweight.

Ladyflip Yes, some people here seem to ignore genetics. Some tall children are tall because they have a tall parent(s). Both my DC are very tall- always have been and I suspect always will be because their DF is 6' 4" as are all the men in his family.

Being over-tall when young is due to over-feeding, just like being over-weight. So you get them to eat less.

In the red book, you can work out their predicted adult height, if that's 95th centile, then it's fine that they height and weight at 95th, they may just be the 1 child out of 20 (so just over one in a class) who should be that height. However, if mum and dad don't give a particularly tall adult height, then they may be over-tall, not 'just big and in proportion'.

This is what I mean by we have a screwed up ideas, we make excuses, 'people come in all shapes and sizes', 'they're active with it!', 'they're in proportion!'. Nowadays people are increasingly coming in the round shape, and morbid obese size, and it starts in childhood.

But parents get all uppity when society tries to do something about it. "How can I stop them growing?!"- this is the whole issue. How do we stop children in the developed world over-growing, while many in the world are malnourished.

Obese children are more likely to be taller than their peers, then they reach and early puberty, stop growing, and put on more weight, and stay obese as adults. I don't want that for my child, so I try not to remain blind to the dangers of being over-tall. There is no '11 year old size', but there is a normal range, but we are accepting more and more children at the top of that normal range, and labeling that as normal, having 5 children in a class of 25 above the 95th centile simply is not 'normal', yet we now think it is. If your child is outside the normal range for their age, then they may not 'just be big', or even 'just be small', something is going wrong. But it's hard to admit that, and start doing something about it.

drinkingtea

I don't think anyone is saying 50th centile is fat! 50th centile is fine (as long as that's 'her line').

In an average class, only 5 kids should be above the 80th centile. Only 1 child should be on or over the 95th centile. The reason people are concerned is that each class has many more than 5 children above the 80th. A 3ft 10 child, weighing 3st 10 may well 'just be big', 'in proportion', and 'eat healthily', and 'be very active', but unless she has tall parents, and her predicted adult height is above 90th centile, she's probably overweight. At least, she should be the only one that large in her class. But, it's not one child per class, it's lots of children, and society does right to be concerned.

There was one oversized child in my class. I look at my son's school, and each class has at least 2 or 3.

I don't see all that many very tall children at DC's schools but I see quite a lot of overweight children at DD's school

Really? Overtall kids are fed too much?

DH and I are from tall families ( even granny was 6ft!) and we are tall and so are our kids.

Surely that is genetic?

Idiotic suggestion. Are all Dutch (tall) people fesding their kids more than the British ( as on average the Dufch are 4 inches taller)...?! Doesn't make sense.

I am saying to work out their predicted adult height first! I accept genetic factors influence height, of course they do, all through my posts. The red book explains clearly how to do this, using both parent's heights.

If your family are tall, then yes, your kids will be tall. However, I see a lot of obese, pre-pubertal kids, where the parents exclaim, 'but she's just tall, she's in proportion!', when they are not tall, and are in fact overweight themselves.

The red book does explain how to work out what height your child should be, and most health professionals should use the line from birth/babyhood, and the line predicted adult height gives, to inform their advice.

It's not an idiotic suggestion that over-height in pre-pubertal children is a predisposer to adult obesity and health problems, at all. There's evidence that it's the case.

It would be idiotic to bury our heads in the sand, to face the unpleasant truth that we have a problem, and your child may be involved.

Ladyflip I feel like that as well as I have one tall child. I am the shortest in my family out of all the adults and I'm 5 foot 9. I doubt my children are going to be short.

Is "over-tall" a medical concept?

Do you have any references for that or is it something you have made up?

How do we know whether the child of one short and one tall parent is naturally tall or "over-tall"?

nocheese, I can't see how overfeeding in one generation, or indeed several generations can make a child too tall. I fairly sure that that's not how height works. Overeating makes them too fat, not too tall.

If your tall then of course your children stand a very good chance of being tall.

However that isn't certain. Likely but not definite. So it's still not helpful to assume that a child's size is completely down to genetics and completely dismiss the chance of any other problem.

Interesting that "over-tall" = "over-fed". Is this proper scientific research or just bullshit?

DS1 was a 95th centile child for height and weight. There is nothing on either side to indicate that he would be tall. He was a head taller than every other kid in his year all the way up to about the age of 14 when the rest started to catch up.

Lots of comments were made to me about how fat and big he was - HV once said "I don't know how you've got this baby so fat" - he was EBF. He was 7lb 6oz at birth and more than 8lb when we left hospital a week later. However, we were told by a paediatrician that he wouldn't be an over-tall adult and to expect about 6ft.

Throughout childhood he remained tall and fat. Today aged 28 he is 6ft1in of rippling, rugby-playing muscle. He weighs between 13 and 14st. There will always be someone at the bottom of the chart and someone at the top - otherwise you wouldn't have an "average". There is no way I would deliberately stunt a child's growth - yes watch their weight, but height? No.

His brother, same weight at birth, is just like DH and I. He's average height at 5ft 11in, weighs about 10st and is lean with long levers. That's just the way the cards fall...