The letter finally came. I’m really upset

[Hell0G00dbye]

Long story short DD has followed the 98th centile for weight since my 37 week growth scan. She has followed it perfectly and consistently which was applauded for the 6 months I breastfed and since then has been a big issue with the HV team. She’s at school and I’ve just received the letter saying she’s very overweight.

What can I do? She eats good, home cooked food, has the odd treat but generally healthy and normal child portions. She’s very active both structured (does dance, swimming and gymnastics) every week and unstructured (walks the 40 minute round trip to school daily, parks and long walks on a weekend, runs around the garden. She doesn’t look fat (to me) but she is solid and does feel heavy to pick up.

The letter says contact the doctor or HV but I’ve taken her before. GP says she’s absolutely fine and will grow into her weight and had no concerns. HV just weighed and said she’s still overweight and to watch portions. Day to day I don’t worry about it as she looks fine and is super active but the letter has taken me right back to her 2 year check and being made to go monthly to the HV for weight checks and their disapproving looks when she continued along her centile.

NB: she has followed the 98th centile but I think the issue is she isn’t 98th for height so her BMI puts her at very overweight.

I never allowed my ds to be weighed at primary school which im very glad about . In the early years he was a skinny thing and then in his last year of primary had put on quite a bit of weight not over weight though . As long as he was active and ate healthily that was enough for me . Try not not to let this get you down op , your child sounds well and healthy !

@Teapacks I could have written your post. My DD is EXACTLY the same. Actually find it a bit of a relief to see you’re on the same boat. I really don’t want to give her issues but at the same time, feel like we’re battling against these natural tendencies.

What do you feed your DD? And how do you deal with nagging for food? I get nagged a LOT, usually deal with it by offering fruit, raw carrots etc but it’s hard.

And this thread is playing on my mind. We’ve not had The Letter, but that can only mean DD hasn’t been done yet.

Trust your instincts; you are not legally obliged by this letter. You sound like a lovely, involved, caring mum.

Might just be portion sizes if she’s given seconds. You could try filling her up on veg. Check the amount of sugar in the cereal and yogurts. What’s lunch normally?

BMI is a shoddy way to work out if someone is healthy or not. It’s antiquated and shouldn’t be a measure of health in any way. Ignore the letter and go with the medical opinion you already have which is ‘she is fine’.

Good grief. None of you have heavy bones. There is not a group of people trotting about with a Titanium armoured skeleton.

98th percentile weight with 50th percentile height does sound extremely overweight for height and I don’t think it would easily be explained by being big boned. 98th percentile is almost the heaviest weight for that age whereas their height is close to “average”. Do you have actual height and weight measurements?

You can refuse to engage with a health visitor .

So much denial on this thread. Can you see your child’s ribs when they raise their arms over their head? You should be able to.
Some very blinkered parents here who seem to think the health visitors are just out to get them.
We are raising an obese generation. Open your eyes for goodness sake.

And “big boned “ is a ludicrous myth unless your child has gigantism.

I got the opposite (and a phone call) as my son was so underweight below 0.2th centile. I actually laughed on the phone and said you need to read his medical notes to which she said sorry I have but I had to ring. 🤨

@Brieandcamembert

Good grief. None of you have heavy bones. There is not a group of people trotting about with a Titanium armoured skeleton.

🤣🤣🤣

Heavy bones aren't a thing. In fact, bones are relatively light compared to everything else in the human body.

People can have bigger frames than others but that won't make them weigh more. I have a pair of jeans that fitted me between having DS1 and DS2. After I had DS2 they no longer fit, even though I weigh less than I did then, presumably because my hips have got bigger then or I'm carrying fat in different places. But the difference isn't noticeable to anyone other than me.

@pixie5121

OP, I haven't read the thread because it's so long, but before you even mentioned the swimming and gymnastics, I was going to ask if she does either of these sports.

I was classed as having a high BMI as a kid too, and it was ludicrous, because I was a competitive gymnast and swimmer. I too looked 'solid', because I had so much muscle! Thankfully my parents told me the letter was a pile of crock and ignored it but imagine if they had taken it seriously...it could have easily triggered an eating disorder.

It escapes me how so called medical professionals don't acknowledge that muscle is heavier than fat. If a child is very sporty then yes, they're going to be heavy! What is worse, a child with a 'normal' BMI who never gets up off the couch or a child who does muscle building sport on a daily basis?

That’s really really not true. My son does tons and tons of sport and is officially underweight. All the sporty boys in his year are the same.

I had the same with my middle girl, she's actually always been the most active and eats the best diet. I just ignored it, she is a stocky build but I could see she wasn't fat.

She did always look bigger than her friends but she was also one of the taller ones and she's always been really strong and into sport like climbing and cycling.

She developed early and at the age of 13 is a size 12 and the same height as me. She looks much bigger than all her friends (they're still in the stick shape stage which she never had!) none of her friends are woman shaped like she is. I expect if you looked at average weight for a 13 year old she'd be way heavier than them but she's still really active, more so than a lot of her friends.

I was the same at 13. By 18 I was average amongst my friends. (although she has much bigger boobs which she hates!)

Just bin it and forget about it.
You’re her mum and you’ve known her size since the moment you pushed her out!
I refused to let them weigh my DS - he’s fine, he doesn’t need to be a statistic in a pointless national database.

It's nonsense, put the letter in the bin and forget about it. Mum knows best.

Of course these letters can't all be wrong. But statistically some of them must be! We, as parents, need to decide for our own child.
And alongside all the advice not to allow our children to become overweight, there's a huge load of advice to avoid our children become over-conscious of their weight.
Meanwhile, we're all encouraged to feed our children a healthy diet. Good advice of course, but unless you spend a couple of years full time studying nutrition, what is a healthy diet? Certainly not the stuff advised on TV/magazine/etc advertising. Maybe these (over?) zealous health visitors could spend some time ensuring that everything advertised as "healthy" actually is. And that companies peddling their "c..p" be prevented from saying it's "good for you".
Then we parents could believe some of the advice coming our way, rather than needing to rate self esteem above all else.

Ignore it. She sounds fine and you said so yourself. It’s the size that counts not the number on the scale.

@NochocolatE

The best thing you can do is throw these letters in the bin. You know your child. You know what she's fed and how active she is. If they want regular HV weigh ins, do them, smile, nod and quietly tell them to FO in your head and carry on as you were.

Yes!

We received a call while on school holidays to tell us our DC was overweight. I was gobsmavked mainly because doctor was treating him as underweight due to his height. When I looked at the height measurement it was totally wrong and had him marked down as smaller than he was height wise. I asked for a remeasure they did it but still didn't take a new height.measumenet insisting it was right. I pointed out he was very tall for his age and had some snotty nosed woman on the phone telling me his weight was the issue and his height was irrelevant. I removed his data from the database and asked that they didn't measure him again. Doctor spoke to them and made them aware that he was far from overweight and you could see his ribs and had I followed Thier advice it could have been dangerous. Hi estky I wouldn't take any notice of any of it. Ask your GP if they aren't concerned I can wouldn't be

My 15 yo 5'2" daughter (curvy) was told Mt a consultant that her bmi was too high (27),. I blew my stack professionally held in the bite! 2 medical students in tge room I asked them if tgrg thought she was overweight, thry both said no - no flab - flat stomach with abs all on show via crop top, big boobs, slim legs, curvy hips. I askedtge pediatrician if it was appropriate tell a child with anxiety she was over weight when clearly she isn't- BMI does work when yiu have muscle and she did.

It's timethey binned BMI and focused on fat pinching which is a more accurate measure. Even fat monitors are nit great- I am 5'8", weighed about 10.5 stones, was super fit, muscles, size 10 and it said my body comprised 28% fat until a sports trainer adjusted it fir me. I was actually 21% fat and she still wasn't sure that was right either.

You can see if people are overweight by looking at them. Noone needs a measure. If docs are worried about blood fat content/vein or arterial narrowing/ cholesterol etc they can do a blood test! I fir one amsick of this fat shaming of people who are not fat! It's esp disgusting if we're talking about kids.

Evening
I am so sorry to hear that you have had the letter about your child's weight.
Has anyone measured their height?
I am a Health Visitor and I try to explain to a parent if I have concerns about a child's weight etc. How old is your child? I would make an appointment with the Health Visitor and ask them to do the weight and their height.
Then you will be able to compare the measurements.
Health Visitors etc are here to support you etc and we don't judge parents/ carers.
It is a Health Visitor's role to highlight any concern we have about a child etc.

My son looked like the Michelin man when he was a baby. Rolls of fat because he was bottle fed, because according to weaning, I had to wait until he was 6 months to eat solids. He was starving (in hindsight) and used to consume minimum 4 large bottles of milk in one sitting.
He was so large (tall as well as big) that they couldn't record his weight on the 'relevant age related page' in the red book, and refused to enter his weight overleaf, where it could be recorded.
We had a letter, and a follow up appointment. In the end we gave up listening and carried on. It was upsetting.
He's 1/4 Dutch. All his relatives are over 6ft.
He's now 6, not an once of fat on him and he's the tallest in his class.
Forget what they say. Go with your gut. You know your own child better than anyone.