to worry about slightly chubby 4 year old DD?

[microferret]

My DD is 4 and a half, 107 cm tall and weighs 20.3 kilos. Our daycare provider flagged up her weight as a potential concern at the last meeting we had, a couple of months ago... It has been on my radar since she was about 2 though.

I'm at my wits' end... We did everything right. She was EBF until 6 months, and then we slowly introduced solids. We offer lots of veg and fruit. I made sure small amounts of sweets and treats were part of her daily intake because I wanted her to have a healthy attitude to them. She loves them, but doesn't over do it. She understands that there are limits, and accepts them. She doesn't overeat at all! She's active, she runs about a lot and rides her bike. It's baffling.

After the meeting, DH and I decided to take some action. We decided to skip carbs in the evening, so she has a dinner of protein and veg, and then some olives or a small amount of nuts if she is still hungry. But it's made no difference - she's still gaining weight at a worryingly steady rate. She has a sweet treat after daycare at about 4pm, just to make sure she doesn't feel deprived. Breakfast and lunch are normal, with carbs. The daycare staff don't feel she really eats too much, they say she eats just like the other kids do, who are all of course skinny as rakes.

I'm really at a loss at this point. It's a mystery as to why she gains weight constantly. DH and I are both slim, we eat lots of veg and model good behaviour. I wasn't a very skinny child although I was never overweight until my teens, but even I remember feeling horribly different and chunky because all the other kids were beanpoles and I was more muscular, with short legs. Even though my mum was feeding me super healthy stuff and I only ate sweets and desserts at weekends.

I just don't want her to suffer like I did. It's a quandary.. Do I take action now (and what fucking action, really, apart from starving the poor kid???) and risk screwing up her relationship with food, or do I relax and wait for the puppy fat to disappear, and risk the problem getting worse?

Has anybody experienced similar? Can you offer tips?
*if you're coming on to tell me about your kid who was fat until 2 and then became a skinny minny with a huge appetite and hollow legs please don't. It's not the same situation and isn't helpful.

She may not have a weight issue, but two things jump out at me...

1. Please don’t give her a sweet treat every day. My mum did this. I grew up with my body expecting sugar at the same time every day and now have a horrible sugar obsession at those times.

1. Why why why are you cutting carbs in a four year olds diet?! She needs good quality carbs for energy. Taking away a potato and replacing it with high calorie foods like olives and nuts is just bizarre and wrong.

There is nothing wrong with olives and nuts. They are highly nutritious natural foods. The OP has said that it’s a small amount.

Olives aren't high calorie (about 135cal/100g) and are nutrient-dense. Nuts are also very nutrient-dense and although they're high calorie it's all good fat and I only give her about 5. Conversely, a pile of pasta, rice or potatoes doesn't have a lot in it except calories. It's converted to glucose in the body, at a time when she is about to go to bed and isn't going to need extra energy.

OP - Is the daycare provider actually qualified in child nutrition?

Obviously I mean more than having worked with kids and seen a variety of shapes and sizes...

Medically qualified people have told you she's fine and not to worry.

I think you are hanging your hat on the one bit of negativity about her size but I suspect that's because of your own relationship with food. I totally get that. My own relationship with food is a disaster and when my kids were younger I watched them like hawks in case they got fat.

however, speaking as a mum of a boy and a girl, I am still fascinated by how little my daughter needs to eat compared to my son. Girls really don't eat a lot

My three year old son eats like a bird compared to his female peers.

My anecdotal opinion of young children is actually that girls tend to have better appetites and be less fussy.

There are some majorly fucked up attitudes to food on this thread.

And as a nutritionist, for the love of God do not cut carbs in your child's diet.

@thehappyegg

I have a son, he doesn’t eat a great deal and never asks for food. I also find the whole boys eat more notion odd.

Is a biscuit day really such a massive problem? Maybe I'm naive but I wouldn't have thought that's making a massive difference. There's no harm in keeping an eye on things but she will probably slim out as she gets older. I definitely wouldn't go cutting carbs in her evening meal. I sympathise though op, my 3yr old dd has such an impressive appetite for carbs so I do limit them at dinner and say she can't have any more pasta etc but I wouldn't cut it out at that time entirely.

OP, take her to a GP and find out if they are concerned about her weight, because it doesn’t necessarily sound like it is a problem.

I agree that she probably doesn’t need the daily ice cream / sweets, but before you make any drastic changes I would be getting an actual doctor’s opinion on whether there is anything to be concerned about. If there is, they can refer you to a nutritionist who can offer sensible advice.

My DD was a similar build at 4. We moved to Switzerland around that age and from looking fairly average in the UK and being assessed as having a normal BMI in the school reception check, she looked bigger than all of the local children.
I wasn't so much worried about how she looked, more that she could end up being overweight. So I tried the approach of making sure she did plenty of exercise, at least 1 hour a day, lots of swimming, hiking, cycling and then rollerblading, jogging and sports clubs as she got older. I stopped buying biscuits/cake/ice cream/crisps to have at home, just had these as a treat when we were out or if we baked them ourselves. Gradually she started to gain height fast than weight and she slimmed down. As a teenager she's still sturdy but it's all muscle and she takes part in competitive sport at a high level.

@tor8181 over 8 stone?! If you put those measurements in an NHS BMI calculator it says "very overweight". My son is 8 and weighs 4 stone!!! (Admittedly isn't over 5ft!)

With the OP’s measurements her DD’s BMI is 17.8 which is above the 85th centile on the Australian APEG charts, so overweight.

YANBU to keep an eye on it. Chances are it may just be a blip but there’s an oversight/obesity epidemic and a whole heap of kids who didn’t suddenly look like beanpoles after a growth spurt.

I think the more you worry about food and diets, the more issues you haven’t think you have when it comes to dcs.

I’m not a food worrier, never have been. My two dcs are very different when it comes to food - one is fussy and eats like a bird, the other is not. The latter is more chunky. always has been. He used to just eat and eat and would to the point of being sick if we let him but a switch went off in his head and now he has excellent appetite control.

The key I think is making sure dcs have lots of exercise, they don’t eat when bored (ready made snacks are a killer for this!) and stop obsessing over every single meal. Look at their food intake over a longer period, not on a daily basis.

I think the more you worry about food and diets, the more issues you haven’t think you have when it comes to dcs

I mean the more you worry, the more issues I think you have when it comes to dcs!

Jesus, do not go cutting carbs of all things out of a child's diet. She does not need treats every day. At all. A couple of times a week at most. My niece is given the same thing as yours ever day and is also overweight.

I don’t entertain the idea of food as “treats” with my DC. They recently started with a childminder and she obviously does this as my 3 year old came home asking me for a “treat” the other day I told her treats were for dogs! It’s an unhealthy attitude and could have repercussions down the line. Your DD doesn’t need sweet treats every day, I understand your logic but I think you risk making it just as appealing by giving it every day.

I don’t keep any sweets/biscuits in the house so they don’t know any better.

We’re in Germany too, and when we arrived last year, I noticed that my now-6yo DD was taller, heavier, and much less physically capable than a lot of the German kids (seeing a 5yo jumping off a swing at its highest point was an eye-opener for me!) I also second the observation that there’s an awful lot of cake and sweets about. However, my children also go to kita, and I wouldn’t take any notice of anything the staff say. When is your DD’s next U- check up? I have found those extremely helpful for discussing random worries I have, and the doctors have been more than helpful. (FYI, my DD is much the same shape as yours (and I bet i’m the same shape as you!) and she slims and grows, fattens up and grows, in a cycle. Yesterday she came down in a pair of trousers she was given Christmas 2017. Her bottom was to big for them then, but now they fit perfectly! We’re all different.)

Your dd is well on her way to a potential eating disorder. No carbs at dinner but you do give sugary snacks and high fat snacks. 🤔

The thing with the daily sweet and the cutting carbs is that this approach seems to have had a positive effect on her relationship to food. A couple of months ago I wrote a post asking for tips on lessening a child's interest in sweet things (I got no responses, probably no traffic in children's health). I noticed she was obsessed with sweets/cakes and was always talking about them. In the evenings after eating dinner, when we were serving carbs, she would always eat all the carbs and mostly ignore the veg and protein, then say she was hungry right before bed and would demand more carbs, like a banana or weetabix. She doesn't do either anymore. She knows she will get a sweet every day, it's just a part of the routine, so she's not obsessed with it. She eats a filling meal of veggies and protein for dinner so her blood sugar levels don't drop right before bed making her hungry for more carbs.

I believe in everything in moderation, and in a long-term healthy attitude to food. Sweets and junk exist, she sees her peers eating them, they're everywhere, she'll want them, that's unavoidable. What we teach her is that a little bit is fine but that more than that will give her a tummy ache or damage her teeth (we NEVER mention weight in our house).

I had binge-eating disorder at 13, anorexia at 17 and bulimia at 26 (!). At 36 I am fully recovered, since at least 5 years. I never diet. I eat whatever I want, mainly healthy but with some junk when I feel like it, and maintain my weight, and I recalibrated my metabolism by cutting carbs in the evening, something that I no longer need to do. My mum put me on a low-cal, low-sugar, low-fat diet when I was 12 and it fucked my metabolism to the point that I could eat 400-500 cals a day and still not lose weight!

So there's a logic to what I'm doing. I don't want to give her the complexes I had about "forbidden foods", so nothing is forbidden in our house. There are simply appropriate times to eat various things. I also don't want to destroy her metabolism by focusing on low-calorie over nutrient-dense.

Op this reads as being all about you and not your child. She looks entirely normal size and shape for a 4 year old. She is active and she eats well.
Don't, for God's sake, remove carbs from her diet. She's a child ffs.
Christ knows how awful you are going to be when she's older. And I say awful because this shit will transfer to her. Her whole fecking life will revolve around food and weight and self image and pleasing Mum and Dad by being thin. Just dreadful.

RiddleMeThis2018

The Kinderarzt scoffs at all my worries. He just points at the growth charts and her pink cheeks and tells me she's healthy. I should probably just listen to him but then I read articles about the obesity epidemic and how 4 years old is when you should nip it in the bud and I panic!

A couple of the other kita mums told me that the Erzieher who flagged up concerns, though very lovely, is notorious for being overzealous in her assessments of children's health. She has spooked a lot of them in the past over things like speech or identifying colours. I think it's just because she loves the kids and doesn't want them to suffer.

You know what you are doing OP. Carry on.

bellini
I care about it because I suffered. It doesn't matter what I think about her weight, she will feel it regardless if she's overweight, that's the world we live in.
I'd never make her feel it's to impress me, what an awful thing to say.
My mum encouraged me to starve myself. She practically rejoiced when I developed anorexia. I'll never do that to her. You don't have a clue what you're talking about.