A regular thread- the weighing children at school one.

[RebeccaWrongDaily]

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-6483913/Does-boy-look-overweight-Mother-told-four-year-old-son-dangerously-heavy.html

apologies in advance for the link to the Daily Mail.

This boy has love handles- the comments at the bottom are all saying there's nothing wrong with him/ that this child is skinny as a rake / pure muscle. Why do (some) parents do this media shaming to their kids rather than take it as advice to address issues that may arise?

Honestly I wasn’t even going to look at the article. My son has just had a letter to say he’s basically obese, but I knew this already and was basically waiting for the letter and phone call because I knew I neeeded support. Trouble is there’s a lot of parent blaming, which is fine, blame me! But people don’t often know I’m not his birth mum, she’s in and out of his life with her own messy life and the people she abandoned him with couldn’t care for him properly so he’s always had a strange outlook on food and 100% binges behind my back to comfort himself (he’s 11) so yes, I fully agree with these tests being in schools because parents do need that support or even that push!

Then I clicked the article and seen the boy! Wow that’s crazy! I mean he is heavy by weight but he doesn’t look it does he?

I thought BMI wasn't supposed to be used on children?

I used to get weighed and measured in school. I was just above the 3rd percentile for weight, just below for height. one of the youngest in the year. I thought this meant I was overweight. I was not. I became bulimic at the age of 8 to combat this. When I started high school I was 4'1. I only weighed 3.5 stone.

Focus should be on healthy children. The kid clearly isn't fat. Outrageous.

I do think our perception on children's weight has changed a lot, compare Augustus Gloop in the 1971 and 2005 Willy Wonka films.

the thing is he does look bigger than he should be (in order to be healthy) as does his brother.

We have normalised this. It is (usually) the parents' fault (unless the child is doing the meal planning and the shopping) Yes, i am aware of competing demands on time and budget hence lack of time/money to cook from scratch / no spare hour in the morning to walk the kids to school. We do have to be able to name the problem without this nonsense. Every year.
Playing football once a week / riding a scooter/ a half hour swimming lesson is nowhere near 'active' kids if the rest of the time they are in a car/on a screen/eating rubbish and even the portions of 'good' stuff are in many cases two or three times more than needed by a child.

My friend put a picture of her daughter and her letter telling her that she was overweight on Facebook (she lives hundreds of miles away).
Loads of comments about how stupid it is and of course she isn’t overweight and in fact she’s skinny!
Her daughter is quite obviously overweight though. I think a conversation might be better than a letter if possible as people will talk themselves out of it.

One of DDs friends was tiny when she was first weighed in school, she is now very obese. Her mother is in denial and keeps saying she’s ‘about to have a growth spurt’ or ‘she’s just developing quicker than everyone’. Her dad was concerned but she has persuaded him she is fine. She won’t get weighed again in school until next year and I really think she needs to be told by someone official for her daughters sake.

It looks like the poor boy issuffer knocked knees as a result of being overweight. I wish that parents would realise that being fat as a child has life long repercussions even when Charlotte often grow out of their fat stage.

I thought BMI wasn't supposed to be used on children
This isnt bmi , this is bmi centile

People have completely lost sight of what children should look like.

When I was at school I was definitely overweight compared to my peers, but going by modern kids I would have been average, probably similar to this child.

My mum totally normalised it, which you would think would help my self-confidence but I knew I was pudgy, and thought there was nothing I could do and was just stuck the way I was.

Ive opted out of the weight thing. My daughter is tall and slim but she weighs a lot more than a friend who is almost the same height and slightly larger build.

She plays rugby and does ballet. Eats biscuits but also stuffs her face from the fruit bowl. She fits 2-3 skirts pulled in on the waist adjusters but we have to wear 4-5 and sew them to fit her as she is tall.

I dont think BMI is wholly accurate.

I think the NHS needs to start showing posters of what a healthy weight child looks like. It's becoming more apparent all the time that many people don't have a clue anymore.

The boys in the pictures are very clearly overweight, easy to rectify at this stage of the mum stops being outraged.

The boy does look a bit chubby, as does his brother, but I can guarantee that his mum sees other kids his age and much chubbier everyday, so assumes her child is ok. The issue is we've normalised children (and adults) being overweight. And the Daily Fail is the perfect rag to take up this story, sadly.

how do you think opting out of the weighing will help you/ your child Mog? If you know she is fine then why not add to the cohort weighing data?

No one seems to realise over weight kids are often overall too.

So again we have all these apparently really tall kids in clothes that are hanging off them when stepping outside reveals a different story.

These tall kids stop growing far sooner than their peers and end up shorter long term.

and that's before you look at the size of clothes. DD and DS are both tall (for their age) and very slim. Clothes with adjustable waists end up bunched around the back in order to stop them falling down. I wonder if childrens clothes have gone the same way re vanity sizing as adult clothing?

I agree the child looks clearly overweight. But so many children are now that people don't realise what healthy looks like.
Thing is, when it's 'caught' early children can be stopped from becoming an obese adult and their lives can be changed for the better. I find it sad that so many parents are in denial and their children will suffer for it.

Sizing is really hard. My daughter is about average height wise so on the whole is in the 'right' sized clothes, maybe a size up in trousers as her legs are long.

My 6 yr old I really struggle with. He is tall, mega skinny with no bum to speak of so trousers always fall down. He looks like a scarecrow a lot of the time.

Ahh I hate these threads. You are absolutely correct of course, and I would say he is overweight too but it just terrifies me that DD will end up like this as she was 10lb6 at birth.

Is there a point when they go from 98th weight and height centile and that being good to overweight on BMI (she is 2 at the moment) just because of their age?

Sorry, not rtft. Goat and anyone confused about bin centipede, google nhs bmi calculator. It explains it all there. I would copy and paste the paragraph but can’t.

Bin centipede!!!!
Bmi centiles.....

this story started in a local paper where they print the letter, the letter says he is 111 cm but they translate that to 3'6

the 3'6 is then picked up by the mirror ,sun and mail and convert to 3'6 to 106. He is still in the overweight category at that weight and height

I don't get why a parent would want to put their child's pictures in a newspaper and get people to judge their weight. All kinds of wrong

mattfreis why have you allowed your child to get overweight?

Clothes with adjustable waists end up bunched around the back in order to stop them falling down. I wonder if childrens clothes have gone the same way re vanity sizing as adult clothing?
I agree. I have an average on the charts not skinny child and find that waist measurements are almost always too large for the length. More expensive brands fit better, supermarket school uniform is useless!

I mean he is heavy by weight but he doesn’t look it does he?
yes he does. This is why we have an obesity crisis. People have lost sight of what overweight actually looks like