To ask what you think of weighing children in school

[cadburyegg]

Discussion on our school groups about the possibility of weighing children restarting as it was halted in March 2020. Lots of parents think it’s shameful and unnecessary, some are of the opinion that it’s “just for statistics” and can also be useful to see what centile your child is at.

I’m on the fence tbh. What are your thoughts?

I chose not to allow my daughter to be weighed in year 6 as we were aware she was overweight at the time. She was aware of this herself and wasn't happy about it. I was concerned it could make her feel embarrassed and upset.

As it is the online form I submitted to retract permission hadn't been registered so on the day she just refused to be weighed. 3 years later she's gone through puberty, had a massive growth spurt and is a perfect weight/build.

Whilst I agree with the weighing in terms of tracking population I think the children's feelings on this should be taken into account too.

I don't have a problem with it but I do have a problem with those parent's who consent to it then play holy hell when they get a fat letter.

Its essential.

We have an obesity crisis because people can't tell what fat looks any more, and millions of parents are in denial about their overweight children.

I was shamed at school after being weighed it was horrendous

I think it's pointless
I had a letter to say DD is underweight

No advice

No next steps

No signposting

Nowt!!

[quote BananaBreakfast]Hmmm... looking at the UK childhood BMI categorisation tables, it appears that a 10yo girl can have a BMI that would be classed as overweight/very overweight, but which at 13yo would be classed as normal. I work with children that age and I would say that 10yo girls often do appear like perfectly healthy teenagers, and that may well be confusing for their parents.

This article about a study into how parents react to the letter is interesting:

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-016-3481-3[/quote]
That's part of the problem. What's a healthy weight and build for a pre-pubescent body is not the same as after puberty. But people think a 10 year old who would be slim for a teenager/adult of the same height is perfectly fine.

I was probably slightly overweight or on the heavy end of normal at 10. My parents thought I was skinny. After puberty I was an adult size 12 and went up from there.

@StayAGhost

I think it's pointless I had a letter to say DD is underweight

No advice

No next steps

No signposting

Nowt!!

Goodness me.

So what did you do?

Schools can tell you if your child is over or underweight but I think people would be up in arms and consider it beyond their remit if they also took on the role of telling parents what they should do about it.

You now have that info as a parent, a fact you might not have realised before. As a parent it’s then down to you to act on it. There’s plenty of avenues you could explore, without needing a handhold. Seeing your GP, seeing if you can see a dietician on the NHS, looking online at reputable sources.

A two second google brings up NHS pages on the first and second hit for what to do if your child aged 2-5 or 6-12 is underweight. Has info about diet, packed lunches, meal ideas, how to monitor progress and advises you to see a GP if things aren’t improving. If you can navigate to mumsnet you can navigate to advice about how to approach your child being underweight.

@NiceTwin 😂 at 'fat letter'

@lazylinguist I think you're being deliberately dense here. The act of weighing a child doesn't miraculously transform them into a healthy weight but knowing that a child is under or over weight is the first step to doing something about it.

Is it though? That's what I'm asking, because I don't know whether this theory is borne out or not wrt to this particular measure. I think it's important to use measures based on their effectiveness. It would be nice to think that this first step led to healthy and sustained weight loss.

So, if data/surveys etc showed that a significant proportion of parents successfully got their children to lose weight long-term as a result of the child being weighed in school and found to be overweight, then great! I'd wholeheartedly agree that it was definitely worth doing, in spite of the potential difficulties and downsides that other posters have mentioned.

If, however, it turned out that almost all of those parents either a) ignored the result of the weighing or b) failed to get their children to lose weight, then I'd say it wasn't an effective measure and might not be worth the resources or the potential effects on children with image problems or possible eating disorders.

Devonshire
It was before I knew about Mumsnet 😮

I WAS worried at the time tbh

All the links were about overweight children

I couldn't really find any help or advice for underweight children

So, they managed to worry me, without providing any useful support 🙄

Surely if I needed to the GP the letter would have said that??

If the "fat letter" is as informative as the letter I got, I can see why parents ignore it!
It's not exactly helpful!!

I support it, it’s important on a population level for public health planning and highlights regional variations. On a classroom level you can see with your eyes which kids are over/underweight with a high degree of accuracy already. Every year we end up with sad face stories in the newspaper featuring clearly overweight children with their folded armed mothers saying what a disgrace it is that their child has been told (by their mother) that they are overweight and how BMI doesn’t apply to Olympic hammer throwers so it doesn’t apply to their 5 year old either. It is unnecessary to create that level of fuss but not a fault of the scheme IMO.

@lazylinguist How can you possibly know what measures are effective without actually weighing the bloody kids though? You say you want data about what is effective - where do you think that data comes from?

I have no issue with it.

Do they also measure height at the same time? I'm not sure what the value of just measuring weight is. My 5 year old is considerably taller than most of her classmates and has size 13 feet. She clearly going to weigh more than others if she's taller so on what basis do they declare a child as overweight or not? She would have been weighed during the last year but obviously hasn't so forgive my ignorance re how it's actually done.

@lazylinguist did you read the link I posted to an article about a 2016 study on parental responses to the letters?

Iirc in affluent areas the increase in overweight has levelled off and turning down, as a result of public health info. In deprived areas (like the one this study covers) still getting worse. (Pre-covid). I do wonder if affluent parents opt out more though - can't see any discussion in the reports. Also, if your kid is superheavy in Sandwell, they'll have superheavy classmates soight feel less self-conscious. In Surrey they could be the only one in the whole school so all the more reason to opt out - which would lead to skews on the effect of deprivation.

@Feebeedeebee

"The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) measures the height and weight of children in Reception class (aged 4 to 5) and year 6 (aged 10 to 11), to assess overweight and obesity levels in children within primary schools."

digital.nhs.uk/services/national-child-measurement-programme/

Thanks @BananaBreakfast

The weighing is to collect anonymous data to inform national health policy. The letter to parents is a courtesy and is a standard computer generated letter as far as I can see. You don't need the government to tell you your child is overweight, of course not. But the government needs to know if 30% of 11 year olds are overweight.

My child was flagged as underweight in year 6 (not a surprise, and under a paediatrician anyway, so regularly weighed at appointments)

I got sent a leaflet telling me to switch to low fat spreads, semi skimmed milk and no added sugar squash. confused

My child did to also under a paediatrician but not for weight and they were money than happy with her weight as she had been under the first centile since birth.
I home educate now, so don’t have any of that nonsense.
Incidentally even for an overweight child butter is healthier than low fat spread.

@lazylinguist How can you possibly know what measures are effective without actually weighing the bloody kids though? You say you want data about what is effective - where do you think that data comes from?

It seems they've been doing the weighing since 2006. That sounds like long enough to establish some decent data. The survey linked by @BananaBreakfast upthread (thanks @BananaBreakfast) appeared to only have questioned 8 parents of overweight/obese children and 8 of healthy weight children. Not a very good sample size, and it seemed to conclude that those parents of healthy weight children were largely happy about what they were told, and those of overweight children were mostly shocked and angry at the process/letter and mostly blamed their children's weight on our obesogenic society. I don't think there was any information on whether those parents then worked on helping the children to lose weight, but based on their reactions, I'd guess not.

@NotMeNoNo

The weighing is to collect anonymous data to inform national health policy. The letter to parents is a courtesy and is a standard computer generated letter as far as I can see. You don't need the government to tell you your child is overweight, of course not. But the government needs to know if 30% of 11 year olds are overweight.

digital.nhs.uk/services/national-child-measurement-programme/ says:

*The data can be used nationally to support local public health initiatives, and locally to inform the planning and delivery of services for children. The programme is recognised internationally as a world-class source of public health intelligence and holds UK National Statistics status.

The programme was set up in line with the government's strategy to tackle obesity, and to:

inform local planning and delivery of services for children
gather population-level data to allow analysis of trends in growth patterns and obesity
increase public and professional understanding of weight issues in children and
be a vehicle for engaging with children and families about healthy lifestyles and weight issues.
Heights and weights are measured and used to calculate a Body Mass Index (BMI) centile. The measurement process is overseen by trained healthcare professionals in schools.*

digital.nhs.uk/services/national-child-measurement-programme/

I'm going to put a different aspect, not ever child who's overweight is fat. I have 2 grandsons with 3 months difference , they're both tall and the same build but they have totally different weights. One has longer legs than the other , the one with long legs weighs a lot less than the other.

DD gets weighed at her hospital appointments as they need to know how she is growing. So I have no issue.

I’ve had 2 friends who’ve had the ‘your child is overweight’ letters.
One posted pics of her child on FB about how she’s not overweight. I’ve never met the child in person (uni friend who lives other end of the country). She is obviously overweight. But of course lots of comments about how she’s perfect size.

Second basically said ‘it’s not my problem, she will need to sort it herself when she’s older’ (she’s not a close friend.) Then sends me messages because when they moved schools she couldn’t get uniform to fit. Wonder why.

Some can’t see it and some just don’t care. I think for statistical information it’s needed. I’ve never seen anyone objecting to their height been taken.