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 do think it's sad that so many people say they binned the letter and advised the OP to. While a child is young it's the perfect time to change habits and increase activity levels. My daughter does sports and you see older children who are really overweight being 'strongly encouraged' by their parents to join in but by then they know they're bigger and slower than their peers and don't want to engage, I'm guessing because they're embarrassed and it's hard work to exercise when unfit.

13 stone is awful for anyone except a very tall over 6 foot 13 year old.

@Nerrsner I was then and still am 6 foot. I'm quite small in my family - I have a relative who's 6' 4".

Remember that the BMI isn't quite right at the ends of the height scale. It overestimates obesity for tall people and underestimates obesity for short people. I can find the evidence for that if you need it.

Has toffee penny come back yet to explain how her 4 year old weighs 5 stone?

Why on earth should she explain to Mumsnet? Christ.

Rhinosaurus

No we don’t, we do have to have elasticated button trousers.

What should it tell me My 9 year old tells me he’s the average weight and height of a 15 year.

An average teenage girl should be on the lower end of BMI, no matter how tall she is. Her skeleton hasn't expanded to accomodate a growing fetus and her body isn't mature enough to lay down significant muscle mass.

@Chouetted unless you were exceptionally tall, 13stone is unlikely to be a healthy weight for a 13yo.

Did Toffee come back yet to confirm her 4yo is indeed 5stone?!

The number of people saying ignore the letter is concerning. I see overweight children daily. It's clearly not always due to special needs or health problems. I think parents have just lost sight of what a child of a healthy weight should look like

13 stone at 13 is overweight at any height! I'm 12 stone and quite overweight (it also a middle aged woman now and eat too much comfort food). We've forgotten what normal weight looks like.

my 9 year old age/height is that of an average 15 year old that should have said

Please don't throw away the letter. Use it as a reason to really look at your daughter. Make sure that you do everything you can to see that she is in the 15% of children who are no longer overweight at year 6.

People now have no clue what a normal weight child should be. I'm constantly told my 10&8 year old are skinny and under weight. They are actually both on the 50th percentile for weight. People just have the wrong baseline in their mind for average.

They aren't sending the letter to upset anyone.

lunar1 exactly the same as my DS as posted above!

@gingerpaleandpround Fine, I'll bite. How many standard deviations are you counting as exceptional?

@mommathatwearspink if she'd poo'd before her weigh in she might have been fine! These checks are ridiculous, tho there are obvs parents who think their child is fine and they're a little porker, but you're doing all the right things so I don't think it's the case here.

Basically, we're told when they're babies that anywhere on the centile chart means they're normal, so she might be on heavier side of normal but if she's on the grid I don't think she's overweight!

This thread has made me face up to the fact that I’ve become a bit chubby (I’m toward the lower end of healthy bmi but store a bit of fat easily) when I’ve always been slim to skinny. It's also made me hungry.
I’m going to do something about this - eat less - drink less - move more. I’m at the age where I would start to slip into fatter older age if I carry on the way I have been !

OP, I've just had one of these letters saying my child is on 91st BMI and therefore overweight. I wasn't massively surprised as I can see quite a few of her friends are slimmer. However her siblings had the same build at that age and are now quite skinny. We took it on the chin though and agreed we could be more careful with her diet as she is one if those children always asking for food.

What I'm now really annoyed about is that I put the measurements of height and weight from the actual letter into the NHS online calculator and that puts her at 88th centile/healthy weight!! So they have not worked it out correctly! After that I measured her height as well and it was a good 10-15mm out which took her down to the 85th centile. So yes towards the upper end but NOT as the letter stated!

@HaudYerWheeshtYaWeeBellend
Is your child having premature/ early puberty? Size 9 shoes at aged 9?? Doing loads of sport is never an indication of normal BMI. Unless he has had a caliper test to assess his fat or a more scientific measurement of fat/ muscle, you cannot tell by looking.

I weight less than he does as an adult woman with a normal BMI.

I'm really paranoid about this, even more so now people are saying they have 5 year olds that weigh 2 stone!

My DS is 7 months (not yet crawling), is 10kg/22lbs and just going in to 12-18 month clothes.

How does the whole child BMI thing work? My husband and I are both tall (6'3" and 6'1" respectively). DS is 98th centile for weight (always has been but is just starting to drop below now) and was 91st for length at 5 months (having jumped from 50th-75th-91st, not been measured since).

Both husband and I have had weight issues in the past so it's something very much on my radar

5 Stone Age 5 isn't right surely?

My DD is 6 and not even 3 stone. She's always been 50% for height and generally a little under 50% weight.

Yet people comment how small she is.

I really think we've lost sight of how kids should look.

Mums at school seem to brag that their kids already have to wear 8-9 (whereas I have to take in the waist on 5-6 for her as the clothes are all mad so wide - which you wouldn't expect a child on 50% to need done.)

I often can't help but wonder if it starts at infancy with our obsession with making sure babies get as much milk as they "should" have.

My DD refused all bottles. Do I never knew the oz she should be consuming. I could only go by her.

Yet my NCT friends would be "oh he's only had 8oz of his bottle" then try and force the last 2oz in.

Their kids were always way chunkier and still are. Don't look fat. Are active. But compared to DD are very solid/muscley looking.

SkydivingKittyCat please don’t worry too much or you could inadvertently instill eating disorders in your dc. Just keep feeding them healthy food in healthy sized portions and teach them to know/learn when they are full.

My ds was always at the top end of the weight scale but they didn’t seem to put it with height so we had letters home about him being obese! He wasn’t, just tall.

He is now 15 and a 6ft bean pole!!

The problem is that school nurses are not able to look at the data and apply it on a case by case basis in an informed way. The manner in which my dd was given the letter 11 years ago was disgraceful.

The interpretation smacks of my not very bright hv announcing to me that ds was average sized because he was 50th centile and that was average. Er no, it was the mean - not quite the average. Everything else that left her mouth was equally ill informed.

Also 11 years ago parents were not informed when school nurses were doing this. They just came. Rather like the hv, after the y6 experience, dd never saw a school nurse again and if I had a younger child I would absolutely withdraw them from school nurses. One size fits all mentality. No it doesn't, we aren't all the same and neither are our children.

At 7 months you cannot be doing anything wrong really.

Both dh and I are tall, me at 5'9" and him at nearly 6'5", and we both have tall families. I fully expect our three to be in excess of 6ft as teens if their cousins are anything to go by.

Our oldest, a girl, is about 140cms at nearly 9, and weighs just over 4.5 stone. That puts her at around 40th centile . She is absolute pure muscle and a bundle of nervous energy who never stops moving. She does a few different sports and has yet to find one that she doesn't excel at tbh. She's hugely physical.

Middle child is 7, around 130cms and about 3.5 stone. This puts him at around the 3rd centile. He is noticeably skinny, and to my eye looks underweight. Both he and his sister eat the same diet, do the same exercise (though he plays different sports which may account for different levels of strength) etc and are very different physically though.

Obviously I don't think 13 stone is right for "a" thirteen year old. I think it might be right for a thirteen year old.

There's a hell of a long tail on the normal distribution. I don't know how closely the heights of thirteen year olds follows that distribution, because obviously puberty will play a part, but I'm definitely surprised at how many people seem to discount the shape of it. That's what all these percentiles you're talking about refer to, isn't it? They model the distribution of height and weight and put them in a handy chart for parents and professionals.

At least, that's my understanding.

Does anyone have a better understanding of the models used?

A weight and age is meaningless without a height.
2 hours a week activity is useless.

Children should be permanently active, apart from when at their desks at school.
Mine certainly were.

If it's the BMI that's 94%, that means that 93% of children her age are slimmer. Safe to say she's fat/obese/overweight.

Portion sizes, butter, salt, fats, processed crap (chicken nuggets, sausages, pies etc.) need to go. Chips have to be the work of the devil. Likewise things like mayonnaise, cheese, massive bowls of sugary cereals, crisps, icecream, chocolate, biscuits etc.

Try grilling salmon fillets or roasting a chicken fillet. Eat with a salad with a vinaigrette dressing, or maybe some green beans or something.

I'm always shocked at what some parents feed their kids. Nearly always, parents on the school run home have a child in a buggy chomping into a packet of crisps.

Yes, there are too many fat kids. You're setting them up for a lifetime of obesity and unhappiness.

Sort it. OP - are you overweight yourself?

Kahlua4me and BarrenFieldofFucks (great name!) Thanks. He is very good at stopping when he's had enough (and I'm slowly getting it into my husband that there's not to be any "just finish your bottle" or "just one more mouthful") as satiety awareness is something I'm keen that he keeps!
He's weaning well and eats a good balanced range of foods. I think he's just destined to be massive!