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?

At just turned 5 my DD2 weighed about that much but was 122 cm. This boy could stand to grow into his weight - he's got little jowls, which isn't healthy at age 4.

My 5yo reception child is 4kg less than this little boy and I've been conscious about his weight for a little while as I think he's looking a little chubby (obviously not told him this!)
He's on the 9th centile for height and the 25th for weight but he's overweight according to the BMI charts. I don't fully understand but we're being careful about portion sizes

Unfortunately looking "normal" could well be overweight. There will be a localised factor to what "normal" is too. I can understand why denial happens. I can only guess that the "sad face in the newspaper" approach is people wanting to vindicate that all is well with the child and that nasty NHS with its statistics is wrong. There are genuinely outliers... but most people seem to think their child is the outlier. Then there's the claims like "built like a rugby player" when a primary school age child can't have the required muscle development to rival a rugby player. Sadly too many slightly chunky baby faced reception class children end up looking like rugby players who spend too much time on the injury bench and in the club house by the time they get to secondary school.

Clothes are a poor guide. My DCs are the low end of normal range (like DH and I both were as children) and they look thin compared to many. Their clothes hang off them. Either the shoulders sag off/ trousers fall down, or I resist moving them up for length and the clothes get short. I've just had to retire 12-18 month shorts from DS1 who is nearly 8, not for the waist, but because the length is getting too 70s footballer. Usually he wears around age 4 for the waist. He weighs about the same as the child in the article but is 16cm taller.

Society likes the chunky baby/toddler phase and has lost sight of the fact that around 3-4, children should be looking lean through infant and junior school. By the time a child looks overweight by adult measures (love handles, moobs, double chins) they are considerably more overweight than you'd think.

We also over value the health benfits of structured exercise. It is a good thing, but not enough to rely on and replace traditional playing out and walking/ running around.

There does need to be better direct targeting of families to help them see and tackle the problem.

One thing I've noticed is that children don't seem to skip rope much anymore, when I was little skipping was like a major pastime for girls, nearly everyone could do it, it's virtually free and as we know it's great cardio exercise as boxers and other athletes do it as part of their training.
As for weighing at school, I personally think all children should be weighed every year, no opt outs. Educating and encouraging parents to look after their children's weight doesn't seem to be working on a large enough scale, so more needs to be done.

I hate these articles, who on earth thinks it’s a good idea to allow a national newspaper to show pictures of your child for people to comment on their weight?

We all know children are getting fatter and it is colouring our view on what normal looks like.