To think nhs school height / weight check is useless

[Ellieboolou27]

Dd is 4.5 she's 3ft 7" and weighs 3st 9lb

The school did the height and weight check a few weeks ago and have sent a letter saying she is very overweight and they would like me to come in to discuss healthy eating.

I'm really shocked as dd is far from being very overweight
She does tap, swimming and multi sports weekly, as a family we eat normal family meals, she wears size 5-6 clothes, 6-7 in some shops like primark where they come up small.

She's certainly not skinny, but most certainly not very overweight!

I think this bmi checker is shit, according to the NHS online bmi checker my dh is obese, he is 6ft 2" and weighs 16st but is an ex body builder so is a big guy with not an ounce of fat on him.

Feeling awful

Well done for addressing this OP, it's not easy to admit you'd got it wrong. It's difficult to look objectively at your own kids as you just see them grow day by day and change slightly over a long period of time.
It's also hard these days as overweight is sadly becoming the new 'normal'.
Your DD is still very young and is lucky that you are sorting this for her now, rather than her having to address weight issues herself as an adult.

A mug of hot chocolate (300ml) made with Cadburys hot chocolate powder and full fat milk is about 300 calories. That is as much as another whole dinner for a child. You can give squash instead of milk with meals. Just quietly change her diet with no reference to her size or shape. If she has hot chocolate every night then that alone is adding the equivalent of an extra meal a day into her diet. She could have a hot chocolate one day a week, on Saturday or something.
If you weigh the cereals once or twice on the scales (without her seeing you do it), and then every so often, you will get to know the new portion sizes by looking at them, or use a small cup as a scoop. 1 weetabix is enough for a child of 4.
We all have an instinct to feed our children, and we can be easily blinded to the portion sizes. And we all used to all think milk is healthy and therefore children should have unlimited access to it. Think of it as changing the diet, and making swaps and changes, not restricting the diet. Eg. instead of a slice of toast with peanut butter, she could have 2 rice cakes with a teaspoon of honey on each, about 70 calories total. Or even a thin scraping of peanut butter on the rice cake instead of on bread.
2 slices of bread is about 160 calories, add a tablespoon of peanut butter that's about 90 cals that's 250 calories.

And switching to semi skimmed milk first then skimmed mean she will get less fat but still calcium. Generally semi-skimmed though is fine. Why not take up the offer of help or ask GP to see dietician so you can get expert help?

Quick question: I thought we were supposed to stay with full fat versions but have less? Happy to swap the dc to semi skimmed if this is not the case!

I wouldn't switch milk type though. Children need the full fat type and whole milk isn't exactly full fat anyway, it's only 3%. A glass is fine. It's just 3-4 glasses is excessive

Don't get upset, OP. Your DD is young and you are aware of it now. You're ready to make changes and this is positive. Keep her active and keep it fun. Let her help with food prep and make healthy foods fun e.g. silly things like drawing faces on banana skins.

Sorry I've just read the whole thread and I look like a complete idiot!

OP, I just wanted to check in and give you for how well you are taking all the commentary on here, some of which is helpful and others of which are frankly bitchy and braggy (god people do love going on about their perfect DCs, and how well they bring them up, don't they? Going to the point of posting nearly naked pictures of your DS on an Internet forum just to show off seems a little mental to me!!!) Some of the mean language and patronising and insinuations have made me cross on your behalf, so I'm impressed how you are focussing on the useful advice and making proactive plans to improve things.

Of course it's a shock to have someone say that about your child, and of course you'd be defensive at first - in your eyes she is perfect in every way, and that's as it should be - nothing is more important to children than love!

I think it's worth everyone remembering (especially all the smug mummies on here telling you things like 'get real' and saying she is 'chunky') that there are a lot worse things you can do health wise to your child than overdoing the portion sizes and missing the weight gain - there have been numerous studies, particularly of girls, showing neurotic parental attitudes towards food and weight, even your own rather than theirs, are huge contributors to later eating disorders in children. Obesity/overweight is unhealthy and of course should be addressed, but to go too far the other way and give a 4 year old insecurities she shouldn't even be thinking about at her age would be much worse. Luckily, as you have noted, you have control over this and can model good behaviour, make changes to her diet and boost her activity without her even noticing really, and certainly without her being made to feel like she is a 'problem' than needs 'fixing'. It's early days, children ARE different, metabolisms ARE different, and you can adapt to suit her body type and help her get to a healthier state without giving her neuroses.

Sounds like she is already very active, so it's just a question of reducing the portions or, if she is used to that now and will feel hungry without a larger amount of food, increasing the proportion of veggies to carbs, low fat proteins to high fat ones etc.

But anyway, I mostly posted to say how impressed I am that you came on here feeling hurt and defensive but had an open mind and have taken on board what others have said (even when they've said it in a really mean and judge way!!!). I wish I was as level-headed as you clearly are.

Also that amount of bread is a lot of salt, particularly when you add the cheese & milk.
I'm now thinking my DD's dinner (main meal) portions are a bit too big & will subtly reduce them.

This is an interesting thread, OP thanks for your honesty
My DDs are due to get their height and weight check and it will be interesting to see what the result is, I don't think they are overweight but it's difficult to tell with your own children. I do think especially in the Y6 that a lot of kids look quite large now.
I do think it's better to tackle this when they are younger as it's hard to lose weight as an adult. I am a bit overweight myself which I am not happy about - I was always slim (size 8) until I had children, then never managed to shift the weight I put on. (I am not sure of my BMI but at a recent health check the nurse said I was OK, but not to get any bigger!) So I am not in denial about it and trying to eat less. It's not easy. I do think if I had started off large before having the DCs how much harder it would be now.
What is it with kids clothes sizes though? I recently bought a load of clothes for my 11 year old DD as she has shot up a bit. The trousers and shorts were all too baggy at the waist / hips and I had to return them - this was Primark, Zara, H&M and Sainsbury's. Even with the elastic tightened they looked silly. I wouldn't class her as skinny, just normal. Same with 5 yr old DD - bought her leggings and jeggings and had to take them in as they were literally falling down. (The length was fine). Are kids clothes being sized bigger?

I'm sure kids clothes are subject to vanity sizing (like adult clothes). I guess it's because the 'average' is getting larger, even though the average is now overweight.

Re milk at our nursery they say they can switch to semi skimmed at 2 if there's no weight concerns

glad you will address this. Just found DD's letter and she is 115cm tall, weighing 19 Kg which is classed as 'healthy'. going off her numbers, 109cm and 24kg doesn't look like a healthy weight at all.

Lelapaletute - what a lovely post.
I agree, it's really important when making changes to do it subtly and not to give kids any hang ups, or feel they are being judged for how they look. At this age children shouldn't even be aware of issues like weight or BMI (particularly girls who have a lifetime of this ahead of them )
Well done OP for what you are doing and hope you are OK

Anybody who has ever been on a diet and weighed out breakfast cereal will know how depressingly small the recommended portions are. And that's for adults.

Also to op. I don't think I'd be as calm and able to take advice
As you are being

This thread shows that height weight check is a really valuable program. Weight is such a loaded issue that it's really helpful to be able to reduce it to a BMI value and focus on that.

No one wants to think of their child as 'overweight' and it's really hard to recognise when your child is heavier than they should be. It feels like a judgement on your parenting to be told they are because we're the ones responsible for their diet. Once you're over the shock though you can tweak portion sizes, make a couple of changes to their diet and get them back on track. You can only fix the problem when you know it is one!

This thread shows that height weight check is a really valuable program.

Cherryskypie, read the thread again. The evidence against the Body Mass Index is overwhelming.

my dd is fat

Ellieboolou27, your daughter is not fat. What's her waist/height ratio?

The girls I know growing up, if they are overweight then an adjustment in what they eat and they slim down but boys seem to be different. I can only go by the ones I know who seem to fall into 3 caterories.

1. The ones who start off fat who remain fat. Who could possibly do with a bit less food on their plates

1. The ones who start off thin and remain slim. They are either really tall or really short.

1. The ones who start off thin or fat. Then they hit 11 and all become podgy then between 14-15 shoot up and become tall and stick thin.

Eating well with good portion control is a start but there is more to it. Ds at 11 developed a massive appetite. He wasn't eating junk. But he was hungry all the time. He put on weight but now he has shot up and lost 14lbs over the course of a year.

Cherryskypie, read the thread again. The evidence against the Body Mass Index is overwhelming

No it's not. And it has not been proven on this thread. Perhaps you could post the evidence please lovelearning

BMI covers perhaps 99% of the population perfectly adequately for the purposes of flagging up issues, just as it has here. Since it is extremely unlikely that the OP's dd is an outlier, I would say it has worked brilliantly here to flag up an issue to the op which she is very sensibly going to address.

Don't tell me lovelearning, you are an exception on the BMI scale?

I went to an all girls private school so I was knee deep in girls with EDs for all of my teen years. I now have a teen girls and can see that things have not changed all that much, except now they have tumblr. Not one of those girls from school, or the teen girls I know now, had a mother, or indeed a father who was neurotic about food. If we could really stop anorexia bulimia by giving a 4yo 2 slices of cheese on toast instead of one then we would have done it by now.
EDs are way more complex than that and while a few of the girls I knew were overweight and their EDs began purely as weight control before developing into obsessive dieting, the most common factor seemed to be perfectionism or a pressure to succeed and a need to gain control.
It is perfectly OK to say 'No, you've had enough now' or to not give too large a portion in the first place. This is not neurotic or 'smug' and it will not give a child an ED.

It's a brilliant indicator for the vast majority of the population. For DC it allows parents to see that there's an issue and address it before it becomes a serious problem and before their DC hit secondary school when they have a lot more opportunities to (mis)manage their own diet.

This thread had been really useful as its made me realise that DD's portion sizes are a bit too big as well, like I make her two slices of toast usually when she should just have one (and she doesn't finish both pieces so she definitely doesn't need both). Also need to nip her habit of eating butter by itself in the bud!