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???

@BuggerOffAndGoodDayToYou to me that means broad
My friend is petite, and tiny. Maybe a size 4, v slim shoulders/hips, doesn't carry muscle, looks like a ballerina
My shoulders are twice the width of hers and I'm 5ft 10 and built like I should be hefting sacks of potatoes about. I could diet to a size 4 and my frame would still be broader than hers. Not a "I'm broad, not fat" post but my shoulders have always been too wide for some coats etc since I was about 9!
See photo I posted further up for me v friends age 12

My son was overweight from the age of 7-14 - the rest of our family are normal to
Skinny - we he started to grow he slimmed down he is slim now With a bmi on the lower side - help your son to eat well encourage activity and relax.

You just need to look at a 5 year old to see if they are overweight.

As posted up the thread, according to studies, 95-97% of parents whose children are overweight think their children are just right.

I got this letter about my ds too, we took up the offer of a dietician and healthy eating person to come and see us, nearly passed out when she turned up morbidly obese herself.

My kid was on 91st centile for weight and 98th for height.
A few years on he is a a strapping 12 year old rugby player who is taller than me.

@BuggerOffAndGoodDayToYou

“Big boned” 😂

......I should have added in my post that I knew that was silly, it was just a thing my mum used to say as I'm sure many of her generation did. I think it might just mean big frame? There's hardly any fat on me, but I have wide hips and very broad shoulders. So I'm not fat, but I'm also not petite.

Overfed children often grow very well, reach their adult height quickly, wear clothes for older children, without the huge rolls of fat we would associate with 'obesity'. For every naturally 'Teutonic' kid there are ten others who are just heading towards a lifetime of being overweight.

I do think big boned is a thing- doesn’t bone density increase with load bearing/high impact exercise?

I definitely have “bigger bones” than most. My wrists are much wider than my peers. Dh’s family are have delicate wrists, about half the size of mine. His mum is twice my size but weighs less.

It doesn’t excuse being overweight, but at 5’4 the bottom end of normal weight is eating disorder territory (i know, i tried). I am best somewhere in the middle of normal BMI

I am no anthropologist but bones will vary in size and weight, we don’t all have identical bones.

Bone density does not equal bone weight. Bone density equates to the concentration of minerals, including calcium, in your bones.

Yes you can be big-boned. But most people aren't. The small number who are, it may add a few extra pounds in weight. That's all.

Muscle is heavier than fat.

I am 100 pounds and five foot and I am only just ‘normal’. The last time a doctor looked at me she called me ‘undernourished’.

Take plenty of no notice.

@Teacher this is a child though - a 5 year old. How much muscle does a 5 year old have?

I’ve been looking at my 2 today. Eldest is slim, probably skinny to many people. She is not skinny - she is a normal weight which is no longer so normal - so she seems skinny.

My boy is decidedly average. No way would you call him skinny. He’s probably around 50th centile on BMI although I will need to measure him again.

To me he is sturdy although he is only 4 and still has a young child’s frame. He is very active and pretty strong and loves to show me his ‘muscles’.

Plenty of slim women could be a true 32/34 ribcage

Yes indeed. I have been a 32 ribcage even when I had anorexia and was underweight. I just had a AA cup I didn't even think 32/34 was big? Did do swimming as a kid since before I can remember.

So many children are overweight now that overweight children are considered normal. Parents just don’t see it. Obese is the new overweight.

Overweight children are more likely to be overweight adults, in spite of all the MN children who are “chunky” to start with but shoot up at puberty and end up 7 foot at 13 years.

I had a letter each for my 2 dds, 1 was classed as underweight and one was classed as overweight. They are 18 months apart and to be fair they were probably at the time both underweight and overweight. But, they ate more or less the same thing and were both as active as one another. The underweight sibling is now 16, still skinny as a rake and the overweight sibling is now 15, has a lovely shape and is a size 8-10. I was not unduly concerned at the time as I knew what they were eating and I knew how much exercise they were having,

We got a letter for dd. The first thing I did was check the measurements. She was actually 2 cm taller and half a kg lighter than on the letter. So they had caught her just before a growth spurt and needing a poo!

However, her actually being on the 80th centile rather than the 90th didn’t change the fact that she was on the chubby side and that did concern me.

We got a booklet about “change 4 life” which listed things that you could change. After going through it carefully I found that the only thing we were not doing was the type of milk she drank. So we changed that. We also slightly changed the vegetables : other food she had by putting the vegetables on her plate first. We also made sure that she was active every day. (Which suited us as we both like to be active every day.)

Tiny tiny tweaks. No dieting. No forbidding anything. Just tiny tiny tweaks.

4 years later she is a competitive triathlete and her BMI is on the 22nd centile. She is slim bordering on skinny. I suspect she would have slimmed down anyway once she discovered sport at 6 /7 without us tweaking anything.

However, the other day we got her Y4 class photo and was comparing it to her YR photo. (So cute!) There are about 5 of them on her YR photo who are a similar build to her. (But chubby but not massive.) Of the 5 now - she is slim, one is still a bit chubby and the other three are now very very large.

Make some tweaks. At age 5 the difference between 60th centile and 90th centile is less than 5 pounds. Over a couple of years that is only a couple of yoghurts a week. So easy to fix at 5. So hard to fix at 15.

By true 32/34 I mean actually measure as 32/34 rather than being plus 4'd into a 32/34...

I'd say that slight would measure 26-28 inches, slim 30-32, but that is purely bone structure - like wrist size or foot size. I measure at 28 inches around my ribcage when I weigh 13+ stone at 5'6... this measurement only changes when I'm pregnant when I get up to a 34... I always need links taken out of watches and can't buy gloves with sufficiently long fingers for my palm width... none of these things are affected by my weight. My clothes size and actual bust size (wearing 30L as need that for cup - should be 28 M?) are affected by my weight...

Big boned is a joke.... I'm a Radiographer and we see some small skeletons on BIG people!

By true 32/34 I mean actually measure as 32/34 rather than being plus 4'd into a 32/34... Oh I see what you mean, not the band size of your bra but the actual measurement. Think mine is between 30/31, and I weight 9 stone, I'm 5'7.

It's far harder to change a teenager's routine than a young child's

OP if you have made it to page 19 this is for me the most important point to take from all the opinions. I teach teenagers and in 16 years of teaching I have most definitely noticed that children are getting bigger. I am slightly overweight now and life is harder because of it. I desperately want my children to avoid being overweight and feel like I have the first 11 years to help this before it's too late. if you address this now your child won't be overweight in year 6 and won't ever know (or care) they were overweight when they were 5

The reality is the NHS do know something about obesity probably more than 18 pages of posters on here I would personally do the following

1. re measure your child. a cm in height could make a difference.

2.If their measurements are correct I would make a routine appointment with the GP. While you are waiting for the appointment why not keep a food and exercise diary for your dd so that you can discuss this with GP

1. Look at simple ways to increase exercise and reduce portion size, Are you or other family members buying sweets? Could you buy a smaller plate for dd? Could you limit screens and let her play out for 1/2 an hour in the evening?At five personally I wouldn't be putting on a diet or cutting out foods like cheese or even worse cutting out whole food groups or skipping meals as some have suggested just look at portion size and "treats" plus exercise. GP will advise you and will be happy to see you about this so don't worry about wasting an appointment. An appointment now could make all the difference for dd,

Be assured if she is slightly overweight it doesn't mean you are bad parent. You are in the company of many other parents. the thing now is whether you respond to this as a good parent should or bury your head in the sand. Don't feel judged, feel advised and forewarned.

I just checked. It's 30.5 for ribcage, 29 for waist, and 33 for hips.

I'm not saying this as judgement of your DD as BMI is a blunt tool at times, but I do think how we view bodyweight in children especially has become so skewed. My DD was upset recently because of being lightly teased by her friends about having a bony back. She's 10, and a super normal tall skinny malink athletic girl. I had to have a really hard think of a way of pointing out in a non body shaming way of pointing out that actually there's fuck all wrong with her back and that the pointy shoulder blades are just a 'thing' to her friends because the girls pointing them our are all overweight, ranging from carrying a bit of extra weight to really quite obese. I showed her some Instagram photos of teen to fifty-something women doing the sport I'm into (athletic, strong women). You could literally see the light go on in her eyes. She hasn't mentioned her back bones since. I notice it with me too - the number of people who (in a very positive warm way) say I'm so slim or you're so tiny etc...erm, nope. Totally healthy weight for my height! Do look at your DD's weight critically. If you can seen her ribs, she's lean and healthy...chuck the letter in the bin! But kids really are supposed to look like greyhounds.

I see this frequently on parenting pages, lots of parents aghast alongside pictures of visibly overweight 4/5 year olds really everyone saying ‘ignore it hun’ Defending that they go to dancing when you know from previous posts that apart from that they live practically next door to the school and barely leave the house at other times and are wearing age 7-8 clothes. Sadly vanity sizing also now seems to apply to children’s clothing too. My nearly 10 year old DD is average build/weight and really struggles, age 7-8 waists are still loose but she’s tall so things are too short. I’m 5’8 and could do with losing a couple of lb since starting the contraceptive pill, last week I picked up an age 13 dress in the sale in new look and it’s not tight, I could have possibly got a smaller size. 6 year old DD is finally slimming out after being quite an overweight baby (reflux caused comfort feeding) but it’s taken time and something I’ve been conscious to keep an eye on. It would have been easy to pass her off as ‘sturdy’ as she’s a different shape to her sister . Bottom line is if your child has been classed as overweight they probably are and no 4 year old should be 5 stone nor 13 year old 13 stone

OMG this is the sort of issue that will have kids being bulimic when they are older. Defo bin the letter, but try to get some action to prevent this going on., and talk to your child s sh understands that she doesn't have a problem

Marypopppins if it’s any help you can get extra long leg trousers in M&S now. 👍🏻

Let‘s phrase it like that: age 5 you got warned yozr child was at risk of developing a life limiting disease that leads to fairly serious health issues early on. it is entirely preventable by some lifestyle changes. do you bin the letter?
Because that is what overweight and obesity is - its not an appearance thing, it is a life limiting condition