cricket-playing girl (11) and 'fat letter'

[morningtoncrescent62]

This morning's BBC Breakfast featured an item where sad-faced Daisy and her mother talked about receiving a letter from the school saying she was overweight. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of these letters, AIBU to think it's horrendous to see a girl of this age being asked to talk about her distress about her body image on national TV? These are really sensitive issues, and I can't imagine it's helping her to be in the media spotlight. The presenters were as kind to her as they could be, but she was monosyllabic, head down, throughout. Surely there are better ways that this issue could have been brought to media attention without the public shaming of an 11-year-old?

I can't find the BBC Breakfast item but here she is on her local news.

Local trusts all come up with their own letters and some only send them out to those who fall outside of healthy weights. Ours have a graph on them to show you where your child is on the centile.

How sad for the girl, that the parents have such little love for her that they would go to the media and hold her up publicly like that rather than quietly having a look at what she is eating across each week and at all aspects of the family lifestyle to see where they can make a few quiet improvements.

Glad it's not just me. I felt so sorry for the poor girl this morning. And the presenters seemed uncomfortable with the whole thing too.

Yes, it was very uncomfortable to watch
If I had received a letter like that I would not have shown my DD and just made some subtle changes to diet, etc.

My DD got one of these letters, teacher told me to ignore it as DD is very clearly not over weight, she is however taller than most children two or three years above her and her weight is fine for her height, sadly the school tests are based on age as well as height and weight so throw up some questionable results!

Over weight and obese children are often taller than their peers because that is one of the ways that obesity presents in children*. That’s why children's BMI is calculated on age not height. Example evidence.

• obviously some children are just tall.

The child IS overweight.

Parents need to parent rather than use their child as a cash cow.

I think it was unethical for that interview to take place. Just because her parents agreed to it does not mean it is ok.

I agree. But there are hardly any ethics in journalism these days.

What does the mother mean when she says ‘it’s not addressing the problem’ . Surely she is now supposed to address to the problem herself. Does she want the government to intervene or not?

I don’t agree with these letters but I agree even less with making a show of a child on TV. Idiot mother and irresponsible presenters.

I thought she was going to be much bigger the way the conversation was going. She could do with losing some weight, but I wouldn't have though it would need to be much.

What an awful mother. Poor girl.

Everyone saying she's clearly overweight, couldn't it be a case of the normal cycle of kids chubbing up in advance of a growth spurt? Many of these kids being sent letters probably fall into that category. I don't think it's a schools place to weigh children. A yearly health check at the GP would be more appropriate, any concerns can be raised by then.

There is such a wide range for the healthy weight I really don't think that's the case. They should 'chub up' enough to make them overweight prior to a growth spurt, if they do they must already be right at the top end of the healthy range. Dd gets a bit of a belly before a growth spurt but she doesn't put on weight on her hands, wrists and face etc as you see with overweight children

It’s the NHS, through the school nurse service, that weighs the children. It just happens to take place in school. The school aren’t actually weighing them.

A bit of ‘chubbing up’ prior to a growth spurt isn’t likely to put a child into the obese category unless their weight was already close to or in the overweight category.

Children’s weight monitoring is not a judgement. It’s just a reflection of the fact that children (on average) are a lot heavier than they used to be. DS2 does swimming club for 2 hours a week and at least 50% of the children that attend are noticeably overweight (even with the swimming they are doing). I was really surprised the first time I took him, because they swim loads in each session.

And it’s not just a bit of weight gain before growth. The children who are overweight have been consistently overweight for the year he’s been going. And the thin (and in some case quite muscular) children have been consistently thin.

That’s just an observation. I don’t sit there judging the children or their parents about it (it’s not my business). I just happened to notice. It is very different to when I did school swimming lessons 30 years ago, when pretty much every kid in the class was skinny.

I agree Unimaginative, I have observed similar at a recent school assembly where I noticed a good number of the kids were overweight. This is not something I recall from my days at school where there was maybe 1 out of 30 rather than 10 or so these days.

The child is clearly quite over weight you can tel my the face alone without needing her weight/bmi.

The parents should of just read the letter and acted on it. No need to tell the child or go to the press. It’s always those with overweight children complaining about these letters.

I’ve noticed at the children’s swimming lessons just how many children are very overweight to obese. It’s shocking that parents clearly let them get so big. There is a huge difference between growth spurt put on weight and being in general overweight.

And it’s not just a bit of weight gain before growth. The children who are overweight have been consistently overweight for the year he’s been going. And the thin (and in some case quite muscular) children have been consistently thin.
I agree.
A bit of puppy fat before a growth spurt looks different to someone being overweight.
You can tell roughly by looking whether a child is larger framed/more athletic build/bit of puppy fat or just overweight.

I was slim before growing (admittedly i didn't grow much) and am slim now.
My friends who were curvy were curvy after a growth sput.
Friends who were a little bit overweight tended to be overweight after.
Friends who were significantly overweight and had parents who made excuses (usually because they were also overweight) ended up piling weight on school abd have had battles in their 20s to shift it.

The mother has behaved really badly here. There was no need to show her daughter the letter, let alone put her on national television so that everybody can see it.
That said, the child IS overweight and so are a lot more children. Unfortunately there are a hell of a lot of parents out there who seem to be in complete denial. Even reading this thread proves that. I've heard someone I know refer to his daughter as 'She's not fat though, she's just strong'. The child is obese. He just doesn't want to see it.

The mother has behaved really badly here.

She has. So has the BBC who didn't let the well-being of a child get in the way of a good story.

I opted out of my daughter being weighed in y6. They did it anyway, as they wanted to make sure they had the data for the entire cohort. Nice.

The parents of that girl are foul though, what utter numpties.