school nurse letter

[devonshiredumpling]

got a letter this morning rom the schoolnurse service to say that after being weighed my dd has been catergorised as severely overweight. we also got a leaflet saying that her diet could be better (she has at least seven portion of friut and veg) we also need to increase her activity level but since moving to the country we cannot get her out of the garden and off her bike ,she is tall for her age at 122.8 cm and she weighs 29.9kg but you cannot see any fat on her she is five .any help would be good aibu to feel peeved about this (she is five and half)

When DS was 5 I got the letter saying he was over weight.
I cried and raged and was in denial.
DS is tall and he was also chunky. Two weeks after the letter arrived he shot up again and was back to being the top end of his bmi but not over weight.
That is his pattern but as an isolated snap shot it was scary.
He's now 10 and, like me, is prone to couch potatoness and a liking for the fattening stuff but I have been overweight for most of my adult life and don't want that for him so we walk or scoot to school, he does karate etc.
Food is an issue for us because he has an ASD and a limited diet but I hide veg in stuff and serve small portions as I have learned he doesn't self regulate and will just eat stuff until it is gone!
In terms of clothes he wears age 13 stuff, not for width but for length. His school trousers are elastic adjustable waists and are pulled in tight.
As a parent, admitting you have dropped the ball and allowed your child to get fat is a bum clenching moment of shame but it can be put right.

older, just out of interest and hoping you might have a more rational explanation than jane was able to give.

You say you accept that the NHS uses school buildings for height and weight checks because it saves valuable funds for treating sick people.

But you also say you don't like the idea of her being given medical care in school. Is it just in school, or would you be happy for her to receive first aid anywhere else she may have an accident and you're not there?

Not a nice thing to be told and I feel for you.
Unless she has a medical condition, which is very unlikely, she must be consuming too many calories.
Can you keep a food diary? You may be surprised at just how much she's eating. My daughter is 5 and fairly tall but nowhere near the weight of your daughter. You do need to look into it. The older she gets, the harder it will get.

Measuring and weighing in schools means that one child at a time goes into the office, is weighed and measured BY A NURSE< NOT A TEACHER which takes about a minute and then goes back to class and carries on working.
Measuring and weighing in a GP surgery means a parent takes the off work, walks/drives to the school, takes a child out of class, walks/drives to the GP surgery ( my school is 4 miles from our nearest GP surgery) waits in a queue, is weighed and measured BY THE SAME NURSE then walks/drives back to school, returns to class and parent returns to work.
Hmm, wonder which one is more time/cost efficient!

This has been amazing. Jane has advanced no real reason for the whole school/health no mixing thing (even though it's clear that NHS carries out any checks) other than to just say no to it. That's then followed up with 'heights and weights are all crap anyway' and a flounce about views being 'misinterpreted'. Some reasons might help, Jane. Proper, logical ones.

Maybe she didn't realise that it was nurses doing the weighing and measuring in schools and then she was too embarrassed to admit that?

Jane doesn't like it because it's what 'they' want.
Don't let the do a vaccination because that is when they insert the mind control chip.

There are lots of times when nhs professionals might go into schools to see children and help school support those children in a learning environment - physios, occupational therapists, speech therapists, maybe even a paediatrician - there are times when education and health need to and should work together to get the best outcomes for the child. Personally I have no issue with height and weight being completed at school because it's a quicker and more cost effective way to do this and you can choose to opt out if you wish.

Ds was measured last month although we have yet to know the outcome of this and it was so quick he didn't even think to tell us he'd had it done.

For the op - it is hard to take on board information telling you there is potentially an issue when previously you haven't thought there was necessarily - I don't think anyone would like it!. What I would do (and will do if we have a letter back) is contact the school nurse directly and talk specifically about your dd. With the best will in the world it is hard to help over the internet because we don't know her - much better to have a face to face discussion and assessment and look at dd as an individual.

bumbley, I'm sure you have far better things to do but if you were to trawl back through the past five pages or so, you'll see that a number of posters explained to jane how the NHS height and weight programme is carried out in schools. No-one made her feel bad that she seemed not to know this.

It's only when she started swearing at posters and making wild claims that her child's school "couldn't be arsed" to take her child to A&E with a broken leg that people started losing patience with her.

No rhonda schools are meant to educate children. GPS deal with health issues. They are very different scenarios. I do not want to 2 to mix ever!!'

Part of the national curriculum is educating children in how the choices they make can effect their health, and this is the case even from the EYFS which states that children should leave Foundation Stage knowing the importance for good health of physical exercise, and a healthy diet, and talk about ways to keep healthy and safe. Do you intend removing your child from lessons where taking responsibility for our health is covered?

Your belief that there is no educational element to our health is alarming. Education is a HUGE element to improving the health of a population and where better to start it than at school. (Clearly it should be happening before this time, from birth within the family home but statistics show that many caregivers, due to their own lack of knowledge about choices and health are unable to educate their children about it.

I have a (slightly unrelated) question.

When they get weighed is it in private? Or is it in front of their classmates? If the latter I would also refuse permission.

20 odd years ago I was weighed at school in front of my classmates and told by my best friend that I was heavy (I wasn't). It was one of the first steps to a decade long struggle with anorexia. So I don't think it means the parent has "something to hide" at all.

Put it like this OP

DS1 has epipens.

The children's one is for weights up to 30kg (66lb - 4 stone 10)

After that you need an adult one.

DS1 was 9 or 10 before he was 30kg and needed to switch to adult one - he is tall as well. (Mind you, food allergies do make you skinny!)

So should your five year old be unlucky enough to need an epipen (God Forbid!) she would need an adult one at five years old. That IS overweight.

In the school I work in, the children come one by one into the medical room to be weighed. They are not told their weight and no comment about it is made by the health professional.

The trouble is that we have lost sight of what wait people, especially kids should be. What is ok for an adult is not ok for a kid.
Every year there are pictures of infuriated parents and their tubby offspring in the press.They are always dressed in too-big trousers and tops with loads of wrinkles in teh legs and arms because they have had to go up so many sizes.
before you say I am being mean.The parents of these children have been with these stories and pictures to the national press.

When people say "nanny state", I switch off and think "ah daily mail reader, no point in engaging". Same with "elf and safety" and "PC gorn mad".

Foulsome I gather from ds friend it was done in private and the children weren't told their measurements

Certainly in my school weighing is in private, the two school nurses take over an empty office/intervention room, two children line up outside, the first goes in, the second waits outside, then the first goes out, returns to class and sends the third child to wait whilst the second is measured and so on until all are done. All finished in around half an hour in complete privacy!

Suburban it's not the location that is the issue. Probably should have explained that more. I don't like healthcare delivered as a group delivery. I'm individual and have individual needs. However that's just a general principle and I recognise that public health campaigns deliver to a population not an individual. It's just a feeling about being treated as a group rather than a person.

I have a bunch of health issues and see a different GP every visit unless I'm militant about seeing the same one. I haven't got the energy or time to fight for that ...so I see a different GP who trots out the message/drug appropriate for a lot of the population but unsuitable for me. I have to explain why, at which point they invariably look up and actually look at me and then my records and look interested. I think that where my feelings stem from.

Suburban, I've read the thread from the start and I have commented before. I know that people explained it to her several times. I thought that maybe her defensive stroppiness was her response to realising that she was wrong about what she believed to be happening but not wanting to admit it. I am not criticising anyone for losing patience.

Normally I do the same, ed.

But there was actually something quite disturbing about jane's posts and the way in which she framed her crazy theories about schools that I just couldn't leave unanswered.

My 6.5 year old is 75th centile for H and W and is only 22kgs.
She is very overweight at 5 :(
Time to reasses her diet and activity levels.
Also...my son eats a lot of fruit. Bear in mind fruit is full of fructose...a naturally occuring sugar.
You could switch to skim milk if she likes milk.
Does she have hot dinners or packed lunch?

it is all done in private. judgerinder I agree that people have lost sightbof normal, my ds is fat, not majorly overweight, but he is fat and always has been but when his pants for his age have to be put on the tightest setting (adjustable waist) I think jesus! who is wearing them on the loosest! my ds is on a very strict portion controlled diet but I find that school doesnt help. I have to tell them not to give him seconds at lunch time.
as for losing sight there is one young girl I see every day with her mother on the school run. she can be no older than 10 as she is in primary school and the pior child is bigger than me. not an easy thing either when I weighed in (pre pregnancy) at 11 stone. I feel sorry for children who are that big. as for height/weight being crap??? why? it points out problems in children and indicates whether further intervention is needed. I know if my ds got any biggrr than he is now I would expect someone to tell.me hes fat! but instead I have people telling me he is small.for his age as she was buying pants for her 3 yr old the same size as my ds! no hes not small, your child is huge!

Oh I see what you mean, bumbley. Sort of an "attack is the best form of defence" stance.

But if I met her in a professional capacity, I would be concerned about her ability to process information and make sensible decisions based on that information.

Thanks all. DS is not yet 2 but I've already had many a worry about that.