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

I'm another one skewing the school weigh results - I have opted out too.
My 4 children will never be weighed in school or have their details entered into the national database. The reason being they are adopted and all have SEN and medical needs - they are weighed and measured regularly at the hospital, I am not going to make school another place where nurses get to prod and poke them - especially without mummy present! (they are about 0.4 centile for weight and height so skewing on the small end)
This thread really resonated with me as like the OP my just 4yr old BC is also 109cm, but weighed 15.9kg at a hospital app this week. (I think thats almost 10kg lighter if my conversion was correct!).....and my BC is not skinny, just normal, 50th centile height, 45th centile weight so the paediatrician told me.
BC wears clothes aged 3-4, starting to buy aged 4-5 for leg length.

Are you really still hear lovelearning banging this particular drum?

As I and others have repeatedly said, yes there will be some (some) outliers. But since the OP's 3yo is unlikely to be heavily muscled like s professional rugby player or rower your point is rather moot.

I would love you to tell us why you feel strongly about this. Could it be because either you or your dc have been classed as overweight but you don't agree?

*here

I would love you to tell us why you feel strongly about this.

BitOutOfPractice, the Body Mass Index classifies some healthy people as overweight and some overweight people as healthy. It also misses the real problem: abdominal fat. The NHS acknowledges that waist measurement is a better indicator of health than BMI:

Measuring your waist is a good way to check you're not carrying too much fat around your stomach, which can raise your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke. You can have a healthy BMI and still have excess tummy fat – meaning you're still at risk of developing these diseases.

BMI screening is not flagging up the warning signs. It's wasting public funds and jeopardising the health of the nation. The waist is key: Many experts believe waist/height ratio should replace BMI; waist/hip ratio is another possibility.

www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/849.aspx?CategoryID=51
www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/measuring-health-risks-waist-to-hip-ratio-vs-body-mass-index/
bedworthhealthcentregps.warwickshire.nhs.uk/Library/bth/articles/2012/june/body-mass-index-child-obesity

Can I just make one wee point! For all those saying that you should be able to see a heathy child's ribs etc ... I've just measured and weighed my son this morning. DS will be 6 at the end of the month.

He is 120cm (grew 4 cm since December - that was a shock!), and is 3 st 6lbs. He is in the 38th percentile according to nhs website - but though he is very slim, I can't see his ribs.

So, although it is mainly common sense, please don't rely on seeing their ribs as an indicator of optimal weight!

Bloody hell lovelearning I heard you the first 57 times you said all that. And FWIW I still don't agree

What I was asking (repeatedly) is why you, personally, feel so strongly about this. How has this BMI thing affected you personally (or your family)

Of course, feel free to tell me to poke my nose out. But there must be a reason why you feel the need to keep repeating yourself let us all know about this

BMI screening is not flagging up the warning signs. It's wasting public funds and jeopardising the health of the nation.

BitOutOfPractice, this is Mumsnet - you're meant to poke your nose in.

My friend's daughter was overweight at 5. She got the same letter. She said the same thing you said and I was honest, at the risk of loosing a friend, that while she might not be obese but she was most certainly overweight. The problem with children who are overweight at 4 or 5 is that by 7 or 8 they can be be obese. She was upset but she made changes. We're still friends and by 6 her daughter was healthy, now she's 11 and still healthy.

Consider it poked then! Spill!

bundao yes I'm sad to admit I was a few days ago "in denial" tbf nobody, and I mean even the consultant she's under for her skin, GP, as well as family and friends have never brought it up, Ive got a gp appointment this Thursday and hoping to get some further support. Best to nip it in the bud, my friends are very honest and upfront, when I showed them the letter from school they were on the same page as me in thinking dd maybe is a bit tubby but not very overweight as the letter states, unless you saw my dd in RL then it's hard to explain / visualise on here. .

lovelearning, I think where you are going wrong and why you are coming up with such irritating posts is because you are thinking that BMI is invariably taken as an indicator of how healthy an individual is. It's not - or it should not be. It is a screening tool - with the emphasis on 'tool'. Of course it is possible for someone in the overweight or obese categories to be healthy - and when we're talking about young children, probably most of the overweight even obese one are healthy.

The research you have linked to points out that BMI is not in itself an assessment of health and should only be part of any overall assessment.

With children, there is evidence that early overweight/obesity is a precursor to later, more serious weight issues, which do have a high chance of impacting on health....and that small changes at primary school age can make a difference that prevents this happening.

The waist-height ratio screening tool is useful for adults and there is some good evidence that it indicates risk associated with belly fat. Has it been tested with young children, whose physiques are different from adults?

Looks like weight to height can be used with children, and may be a better predictor of later overweight/obesity.....www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v37/n7/full/ijo201332a.html. Need more research to see how practicable it would be to do this screening in a UK setting.

on edit......in the UK where the screening is done on very young kids.

Is waist measurement really reliable? It seems you'd have to get quite big to me to flag up as a risk, and depends on frame.

I've never heard of it as a screening method so please educate me if I'm being an idiot. My ribcage and waist is very narrow, being a classic pear shape, so it would take a long time of having a poor diet and gaining weight for my waist to show up as a warning sign, and I don't know that it would give a good indication of visceral fat either since I currently have very obvious fat rolls (not fit at all) but a small waist measurement? There's a 13" difference between my hips and waist so for it to catch up enough to class as overweight, I'd be wearing size 24 trousers! That seems a long way past 'just overweight'.

I know it's another blunt tool but it seems even less flexible than BMI. Unless I've misunderstood something, which is quite likely!

Quite a lot of research behind it Roxara - it's got a good evidence base.

BMI and waist/height has a huge correlation in itself, so for all the people well correlated it will be just as a good a method.

The large muscle athletic people where BMI fails will not be caught by waist/height.

The people like you Rixera, will be missed by waist/height and caught by BMI.

No large scale screening method is perfect, both BMI and W/H have good scientific studies backing them up at the population level for judging risk.

is waist/height really reliable in children? A lot of children have pot bellies until 5 or so recently (I asked about this on a thread recently) so would this not skew the result and make them seem overweight when a child's physique is just a bit different? My daughter is 4 and still has a bit of a belly - she is certainly not overweight, in fact she is underweight for her height.

In tiktoks link, the young people studied were aged 8 to 18, so W/H may not be so reliable for younger children. Also, if some parents find weighing their children intrusive, many more would find measuring their children around the waist intrusive. There will be outliers either way, though muscle mass is unlikely to be a probem with children. For exceptionally tall children, parents can always look up the average age for their child's height and see if they would still be regarded as overweight at that age.

Crumbs1 Sorry but your comment about her doing her child a favour in terms of 'friendship' really wound me up!!! So you're suggesting that friendships are based on weight?! Wow