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 haven't made it up. It's what I was taught in my degree.

www.bupa.co.uk/individuals/health-information/health-news-index/2006/hi-030806-tall-children

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00442687#page-1

www.nature.com/pr/journal/v49/n2/full/pr200144a.html

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20117560

www.hscic.gov.uk/ncmp - the problem is that children do usually grow 'in proportion', but one day the growing stops, and then there is one way to go!

Yes, you can work it out by working out their predicted adult height, which uses the parental height.

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.

Its only a very rough estimate. I'm 5'2, dh 6'2 according to you my ds would turn out to be overtall and therefore going to be obese. He is 18 and 6ft and about 11 stone (swimmer triangle shape body) He has just followed his centiles since he was about 2. If we used your guide he would be about 5'9. My dd16 5'5/6 is about correct, but she is the tallest girl in my side of the family by far, my dsis is 4'10 and nieces are 5'00, dm is 5'2. DD was always on the short side until she hit puberty at 11 and shot up to 75th centile for height (weight was a lot less)

nocheese, can you point me to a study that says overeating causes children to be too tall because I 've never heard of that.

Children and adults are taller than say 200 or even 100 years ago, but that's mainly done to better treatment of diseases and much improved nutrition, which are all good things. Soldiers in the 1st World War were found to be short and malnourished.

I'm only labouring the point because tackling obesity is one thing, but stigmatising a child's height as well seems massively misguided. Unless it's a hormonal condition then nothing can be done about it.

I'm out.

I'm not going to try putting a rational argument against being told I'm speaking bullshit.

We get told off, as health care professionals, for not telling parents their children are too big. This is why. Bury your heads in the sand. We have lost sight of normal.

firesidechat, children grow in proportion. The reason we think we can tell when an adult is overweight is because they only grow out. With kids, they grow up as well as out, that's basic science! So an overfed child will grow big both and every way. I don't think I can find studies, because that's just something that's taken as logic, just like you won't find studies proving children lose their milk teeth.

I'm not sigmatising height. Just trying to dispel the 'but he's in proportion, so he can't be obese!' myth, which appears to be an overvalued idea here, and I give up.

It does make sense nocheese

I'm confused. The paediatrician who told us that DS1 would not be overtall worked his adult height out based on whatever method was prevalent at the time I assume - and he was right.

It's impossible to say that someone is "over-tall" (what is that anyway?) until they have actually stopped growing surely? DS1 clearly did all his growing in the early years then slowed down and his peers caught up. Essentially he raced away from the others at birth and kept going for about 14 years, then continued to grow but at a much slower rate. They all ended up in the same ball-park, which makes a nonsense of "over-tall = over-fed". Yes, he's taller than the rest of his close male blood relatives, but not massively so, and I'm assuming no longer on the 95th centile (if they have that for adults).

Sorry nocheese, I didn't see your post with the links.

I'm not getting at you, but I had honestly never heard this before and I don't think others had either.

I'm certainly not arguing that it is ok to ignore childhood obesity, as you can see from my previous posts and I do agree with the OP that we have lost sight of a "normal" weight.

I suppose the problem is that we can see obvious overweight and we can see tall children, but we have no idea if the tall child is just tall or suffering from being fed too much. Whereas a fat child is always a problem.

I had one child slightly above average height and one slightly below and they have both always been extremely slim.

I've just looked up DS1's adult height on the adult centile chart and at his age he is at his maximum height. He remains on the 95th centile. How is 95% of maximum "over-tall"? .

I agree we have lost sight of what is a healthy weight for children, mine were big babies and toddlers but once they got to about three they slimmed down and now ds2 and ds3 look very skinny. To the point people say they look too thin but both have had to see pediatricians (for injury) who weighed and measured them and said they are healthy and the right weight. Both Drs said that you should be able to see their ribs and collar bones etc.

Ds1 went through a phase where he was a bit chunky and we watched his portion size and spoke to him about his diet, he is has since shot up and puberty hit and has slimmed down but he has a similar build to dp and a tendency to over eatso we keep an eye on him.

I'm not saying we haven't lost sight of what constitutes obese either. I'm not even denying that DS1 was fat as a child. He was. I'm not denying he's a big guy today - he is. But his weight today is much closer to the ideal than it was as a child - in other words, he's gone from being a tall, fat child, to a tall, slightly heavy adult.

His weight is at the bottom end of overweight, which doesn't surprise me looking at him, but he is pretty well muscled these days. I'm under no illusions (and neither is he) that he could run to fat if he didn't watch himself.

In short, some people are just naturally bigger than others. Children grow at different rates and I don't believe that you can make an individual child exceptionally tall by feeding them. There are far too many other factors in play.

Ok, I've just weighed and measured them. DS is off the scale height wise and has a BMI of 39. DD has a BMI of 40.

I can do the height predictor but at this stage I have no idea whether they are going to achieve that height, because I can't see into the future. DH's predicted height would also have been nowhere near what his actual height is.

nocheese I do see the point you are making but I'm confused as to whether I should be worried or not, and how I can tell whether I should be worried. They are tall, with a very tall father, and have a healthy BMI, but that isn't enough?

Interestingly, it just served to remind me what a bum deal we women get. I accidentally left the calculator on male for DD and her BMI was 3 points lower for the same set of results.

I've heard the idea of being over tall. I fully accept that some children do have that problem. There is a family who have a child in both DS1's year and DS2's year and both of those children are always the tallest in their year and the fattest. They are definitely growing both ways - we shall have to see if their growth outwards stops at the same time as their growth upwards.

My problem with what nocheese says and with those who send out letters telling parents that a child is overweight, is that they have fallen into the trap of thinking that charts are gospel and that any child who reaches a certain height ahead of the chart must be overweight. What a load of tosh. The charts are based on averages. There will always be exceptions as some of us are pointing out - some children are tall for their age but perfectly in proportion and will remain so without becoming overweight. There wouldn't be quite so many letters to the papers if those collecting the data took the time to look at a child and see if they are overweight and whether they really justified the letter. I suppose that would require training though and not just the ability to use a tape measure and set of scales.

Measure and weight all you like but some children will be ahead of the curve and don't deserve to have a label slapped on them.

Ok nocheese perhaps this is an easier question - if a child is "over-tall" from the get-go, what can be done about that? How little do we have to feed them in order to bring them back into line? And where is that line? Are you as "health care professionals" wanting all children to come in bang on 50%?

This is why we are confused - you say that over-tall = over-fed, but you don't explain what constitutes over-tall, what is the "ideal" and, most importantly, what people are to do with their "over-tall" DC. Nor do you look at context. A 5ft 9in woman with a 6ft 3in husband (I'm looking at you William and Catherine) is very likely to have a tall child, who may or may not also be heavy (I'm looking at you Georgie-boy).

YANBU

Last night i watched The Goonies with my dc's, both dh & I commented immediately on the character called "chubbs", not very pc he was the fat child in the gang.
Only by todays standards he is not at all, our frame of reference is completely different now.
Everyone, adult & child is so overweight that we dont acknowledge weight as a problem unless it is scarily high.

I also have two nephews that are very big (tall and fat) for their age.
They do look overweight, regardless of their height. In particular they are large around the stomach.
Their mother is obese and they may well follow her.

On the waist sizes, it also seems to me that the cheaper the clothing range, the bigger the waist. Supermarket/Primark much bigger than Boden for example.

Well I am learning something, did not know about kids being able to be over-tall.

How can you know if it is a problem or not? Both my DC are tall ( tallest in their year), one is slim the other (too) skinny. Mum (me) is 6ft1, dad is 6ft5, so I guess them being tall does not mean them being "overtall"

But how can you know?

Oldest boy is 95 centile for height and 5th for weight, I worry about his skinniness tbh

Overtall Christ
I'll tell my six foot one friend she's obese then..

it's better that is not what nocheese was talking about.

nocheese is talking about the adult height inficator which can onky be a very rough geustimation nothing more. However she is saying that it should be used an accurate forecast and if your child is growing on a taller centile than that they are over tall and will be obese. Its clearly nonsense or all brothers or sisters would end up the same height.
My ds has ended up 3 inches taller than that estimation but is shorter than jos dad.
my family has short genes, dh family has taller genes, both dcs have inherrited the taller genes.

It

It appears from the links that nocheese supplied that the best thing to do for big/tall children is to regularly measure their BMI and take action if it creeps up. Not just restrict the food available to tall children.

When you have parents at different ends of the height spectrum, using a parental height based method to predict adult height will be hopelessly inaccurate. Even the height predictor in the red book acknowledges that 80% will be within +/- 6cm of the predicted height. That is really inaccurate.

My DH is 6'3" and I am 5'3". My DD is on 91st centile for height and 75th for weight and has tracked them consistently. If you used our heights to estimate what centile DD should be on, it wouldn't be 91st. She just takes after her dad more than her mum in height.

It is also worth noting that I regularly see people say "my child is on the 95th centile for height and 95th for weight, so is perfectly proportioned". That isn't the case. You need to use a BMI calculation or chart to know whether your child is in proportion. As an example, my DD with height 91st/weight 75th is on the 50th BMI centile, so what looks like a mismatch in centiles comes out to being in proportion.

nocheese is the only one on this thread speaking sense, and evidence based.

OP YANBU most parents have lost touch with how children should look to give them the greatest chance of turning into normal weight adults. And they don't want to know.

Recently, I sat next to an enormous woman and her very, very overweight daughter (? 6,7 or 8 years old). The mum was sounding off on the phone about how she had been told her DD was overweight and how stupid it was. She even said "If dd is overweight, what would that make me???" in an outraged tone (Answer in RL; exceptionally morbidly obese but she clearly had no idea at all)

Over tall is not commonsense