To be horrified the NHS classes 5yo DD as overweight?

[mommathatwearspink]

DD (5) had her school night and weight check at school earlier in the week. Received a letter today saying that she is on the 94th percentile and classes as overweight for her age and height.

Im horrified! She doesn’t look overweight, does gymnastics and swimming each week, doesn’t over eat, treats are limited and I cook healthy meals from scratch most days. What the hell am I doing wrong???

I’m not sure these letters do any good. Does anyone take notice really.

Parents are either in denial, I see
Facebook posts about their children being ‘fine’ but to me they are obviously overwrought. Or they don’t care. DDs best friend is very overweight and her mum says ‘she can sort it out when she is older if it’s a problem’. There a girl in DDs class and her mum said to me that she thought she would ‘grow out of it’ she won’t though.

I apologise for the mistakes. It's past my bedtime.

mindproject I'm sorry but what the fuck does Boris Johnson's weight have to do with this?

The government needs an idea of how many overweight/obese children there are and are not in the country, in order to plan strategically.

Both education and NHS funding will need to be looked at and that's just for starters.

Your 'My child's alright Jack' is pretty awful really and something you may regret should your child become overweight/obese in later years and needs to rely on the NHS due to that.

Overweight not overwrought?!

I should say DD is fine, she is regularly measured by consultant and she is an average weight and tall. However I look at her and can see she is not as skinny I or my classmates were at her age. I was feral though.

I used to share an office with school nursing. When they were doing the phone calls about the height / weight letters one of them explained her frustration to me. Basically in the 1980s everyone would know which kids were overweight because the one or two overweight kids would stand out. Now it is like that in a few schools, but often the letters are going to over half the families in the same school (just for the relevant year groups obvs). So the parent on the phone would say 'he's not fat compared to the rest of his class' but the nurse wasn't allowed to say '46 out of 60 kids in that group are overweight'. So comparison is not useful.
Overweighthness isn't evenly distributed. Some areas have a lot more of it that others, so you can't really tell just by looking.

I would also add that I watched it's you fault i'm fat with DSS (15) who said to me about half way through 'whatever we do we can't let x grow up being fat as she'll be so unhappy"

That's from a 15 year old livng through the age of social media. It might be a sad state of affairs but its probably true.

My friend was so angry when she got the letter for her DS but he was overweight then and now aged 7 he's clearly obese.

IME, the only parents who are ever angry about getting this letter are the ones whose DC are overweight. Parents who have kids who are genuinely slim, just heavy, laugh the letter off. It's the parents who secretly know their kids are overweight who get defensive and find it easier to come on an internet forum and moan to a load of people who don't have a clue what their DC look like, than to face up to the problem.

Being overweight in childhood puts kids at risk of diabetes, cancer & heart disease as adults. The NHS is trying to protect kids from illness and premature death. If a few parents get upset along the way, that seems a small price to pay.

What I don't understand and please could someone explain my 12 year old son is 97th percentile and the height is 98 percentile. I am told there is nothing to worry about weight wise. Although he pack his face constantly today he had 2 baked potatoes, a 12 inch dominos pizza to himself and ate a 500ml tub of ice cream and well as plenty fruit. This is typical and it's stayed stable his weight. Over weight kids must eat more and never skip a meal.

How would we know if your judgment is correct or not? It's not the NHS's fault if your child's weight, statistically compared to the weights of other children, fits into a certain category.

If I look back through DS's class photos, there is a cluster of about 5, round faced chubby in a toddler-like way children from the reception class photo... fast forward into y3 and they are clearly significantly overweight with very round faces, rolls of fat and notable development on their chests regardless of their sex having grown each year in between. This does not bode well for the check in a few years in y6.

Too much good food can make anyone overweight. So many children's activities are actually quite low in the amount of time of quality activity per child. A "30 minute" swimming lesson is more like 10-15 minutes of movement... about the same benefit as the time spent in the showers and changing room.

Looking around at other children is so relative. I've worked in schools where most of the children are lean and slim and others where the vast majority are overweight.

We can't tell what OP's child is like, but it's a good time to look again with fresh eyes and review lifestyle habits. If necessary, a few tweaks here and there can save a lot of upset in the future.

We're quick to be scared of eating disorders such as anorexia and rightly so, but we're not so great on the other end of disordered eating such as binging and secret eating. To start life as an overweight adult from childhood means an epic mission to completely overhaul your lifestyle, and we know from innumerable threads that it isn't easy especially if it's tackling a long term issue.

My older DDs are 13 and 11 and in the last month or so it’s shocked me listening to them talking about weight and size with their friends. My 13 year old DD has girls in her year who have announced they are on diets. My 11 year old is quite solidly built (not overweight, but BMI on the 60th centile) and swims and has swimming shoulders. I overheard her friends discussing with her the best sport to play to get the “best” bodies. “Luckily” a strong, female swimming body was considered a good thing .

Presumably this awareness isn’t happening in a vacuum and these girls’ parents are instilling their own issues upon them but it seems very naive to assume that if you never mention your child’s weight to them then they’ll sail through childhood with no awareness that they’re overweight and escape eating disorders.

My children aren’t weighed at school (not in the U.K.) but body awareness seems to be a thing from a very young age. It’s sad how little girls don’t get very many years before they are made to feel self-conscious.

If your child is overweight/obese and you neither address it nor acknowledge it there’s pretty much zero chance that their peers won’t make them aware of it it late primary, early high school.

@soapona
If he's as tall as he is heavy then his weight may be more proportionate (though maybe not)
An entire pizza and 500ml ice cream is not only masses of calories but it's also masses and masses of salt, sugar and fat. Regardless of his weight, that's a recipe for a heart attack or diabetes if he keeps eating like that into his adulthood.

Just a question DS14 is classed as overweight, but is 98th centile for weight and height and has been since birth. If someone has consistently been that centile their entire life is there not a point at which you say that this is just how centiles work? I would be more concerned if they had gone out of sync, but for both to have remained 98 somehow worries me less??

I don't know what we'd do about it anyway tbh, due to asthma and allergies (many fruit and veg sadly) we are quite restricted in what we can do, I think eating asking SW type lines going to work best)

Everytone I’ve seen an outraged letter and photo on social media I’ve thought that the child looked overweight. However, all of the other comments are of the ‘dont worry hun he’s perfect’ variety.

There is a massive demographic variance. I go to a baby group at a prep school and I have not seen a single chubby kid there. Bmi on children isn’t going to be massively out. There aren’t many 4 year olds that pile on enough muscle to make that much difference.

It's hard isn't it? An overweight child doesn't look fat. My DS is one of those kids. My older DD is skinny as a rake and she can eat whatever she likes. She never sits still so she burns it off. But my DS is much more relaxed and slower paced, he prefers to sit at colour than run around. I weighed him a couple months ago and worked out his BMI and he was a little overweight.

All my friends I've asked for advice just say, oh he's fine he's not fat. But too heavy for a child is so different for an adult and I can see he is carrying a little too much fat for his age. For me discovering his BMI is too high has been a turning point. We've changed our routine and diet a little bit. We were playing with some scales out and about the other day and his BMI has just shifted into the healthy band now which is great. But if that can happen with small changes in two months to me it's clear that in our case the BMI was accurate. As parents it's our duty to protect our kids health and while BMI isn't always accurate I do think it's selfish of parents not too pay attention to their child's weight.

Obesity over 50 isn't inevitable. I'm 64 and not as slim as I was but I'm 5ft 4 and 9st 2 I enjoy my food but am active and eat healthily. Believing it is inevitable makes it inevitable.

OP hasn't returned... Think we might have scared her off.

@ToffeePennie
5 stone is a lot for a five year old and how can he be a runner in reception or year 1?

@ohtheroses
50th centile is the median not the mean. Anyway they are both averages so the nurse was right

How can you be slim and heavy?
My DD is slim. When weight / height taken into consideration her BMI is under the 20th centile.

My DS is on the 50th centile. I don’t really think he is slim - just normal.

How can you be slim and heavy?

If you are tall.

@soapona

"What I don't understand and please could someone explain my 12 year old son is 97th percentile and the height is 98 percentile. I am told there is nothing to worry about weight wise. Although he pack his face constantly today he had 2 baked potatoes, a 12 inch dominos pizza to himself and ate a 500ml tub of ice cream and well as plenty fruit. This is typical and it's stayed stable his weight. Over weight kids must eat more and never skip a meal."

I'm guessing that's not a "normal" day food-wise, though?! I dread to to think how many calories are in that, waaaaay more than a 12yo should be having in a day

...pressed 'Send" too soon. The centiles compare height & weight, but - because they are based on averages - they can throw up some weird results in children who are very short or tall for their ages, or who have conditions that make their growth patterns atypical, e.g. Down's. Centiles tell you who is outside the normal distribution (at either end of a bell curve). They don't actually tell you who is overweight although, if you are on 98th centile for weight, it is highly, highly likely that you are.

Also, although a lot of the 'muscle weighs more than fat' stuff is bollocks (it does, but not enough to make a significant difference in most cases), really muscular older children can get odd results.

If you are tall.

BMI takes in both weight and height.

DD is over 50th for weight alone but when you add her height to it, it brings it down quite a bit.

I guess its different peoples perceptions of what slim is.