To think that at 5'8, 9 stone is not overweight, for children or adults?

[randomusername03]

Took ds (12) to gp earlier in the week, to be absolutly crucified for him being overweight. In front of ds no less. Which Im probably more annoyed at, he has asd eating difficulties enought without restricting his food anymore. But I genuinely dont look at him and see him as overweight. Hes not a skinny thing but hes not overweight neither imo. Im 5'9, if i dropped to 9 stone (I wish, havent been that weight since i was at school) people would question whether I was anorexic. Or have I turned into one of these mothers that genuinely cant see when their kids are overweight?

You've said a couple of times that he's not thin, so would you say he looks overweight?

Either way, the GP should've bloody weighed him!

@GoodVibesHere he’s 5 ft 8. That’s not child size.

I am so pissed off with people rolling out children are tall because they are overweight…my DCs are tall because their father is 6ft3. Their cousins are 6ft4 and 6ft (latter is a girl.) It’s in the fucking genes.

Some 12 year old boys have already started puberty and their muscles are developing so they weigh morr. There is a boy in my DS’ football team who is almost 6 ft at 12. He’s definitely not overweight but I’m sure that he weighs at least nine stone because otherwise he’d look ill.

I can't get my head around this. It makes no sense. How can you possibly be overweight at that height and weight. No. Just no. Nonsense.

Those are exactly my stats and have been since I was a teenager, and I’m towards the lower side of a healthy weight. Maybe he could ideally tone up a bit and turn some fat into muscle, but then likely he would gain weight, not lose it. BMI is such a blunt tool. I feel sorry for the pressure put on young boys nowadays. It used to be only girls who faced this kind of crap, but instead of making life better for girls we’ve apparently just made it worse for boys too.

People are taller than they used to be years ago because of better nutrition as well.

My parents arent particularly tall but they are products from the 30s! I was born in the 70s and am taller than average at 5'6 but not particularly tall. My dad is only 5'8 and getting shorter and my mum is 5'2 or something like that. All her family are quite short but would be considered average I think

Oh and when I was 12, my mum took me to our GP and he described me as fat. I was 5ft 4 and a size 8 (size 4 in today’s vanity sizing). I was definitely not fat. I was tiny. But I did have a round face. I was born with one and I will die with one!

tbh I am more annoyed at her saying this in front of ds more than anything else. If ds wasnt present I would have discussed it further with her, but I really felt for him sitting there as the gp spoke about him being overweight and criticizing his died as though he wasnt there. I'm well aware ds doesnt have the optimal healthiest diet, hes asd and eats the sum total of about 6 different foods!

It's all relative. My 5 year old was 99th centile for length and 98th for weight at birth.

At 5, 98th for height and 69th for weight (for her height and age as per NHS calculator).

Visibly taller than many peers at nursery, i was the same. Her Dad was an 11lber and is tall. I'm only 5ft5 but the women on his side are all 5ft10, 5ft11.

She looks bigger than her peers and as a result I keep a really close eye on her, I'd like her to be closer to the 50% for weight and working on her growing faster than she's gaining weight rather than losing any weight.

Neither me nor her Dad have a slim build. Even when i was underweight and being encouraged by the doctors to gain weight i still had big legs 🤷🏻‍♀️ we are all different.

Id describe ds as neither fat nor thin, sturdy if anything. His brother was thin, ds1 is 6'1 and weights about 10 stone on a good day. I dont worry about it as I know when ds1 hits about 30 he will fill out, going by my brothers! I see what I consider obese children at school, ds is nothing close to like them.

At 5ft 2 I’m fairly slim at 9 stone (at my current 11 stone I’m a definitely overweight but not exactly big). YANBU….

….But, I’m not sure how Dr’s guage a child's weight, my eldest is autistic and lives with his dad, I raised concerns over his weight a few years ago because I knew for a fact he wasn’t being fed very much at home and it was lack of food not fussy eating, the NHS calculator put him as severely underweight 1st centile, he was skin and bone & you could count every rib, the Dr said his weight was fine because he was a low centile at birth so is never expected to be high!! A a premature birth he was definitely higher than 1st centile though!!!

His school also refused to agree to childrens they believed he was underweight but were also going out of their way to make and send him home with food!!!!

The mind boggles!

I'm 5"9 and was anorexic at around 10 stone.

Seems odd to me, that's a healthy BMI.

Just to add to my comment above that I was 9st and very slim indeed at 5'7 in my late teens.

I was an overweight child, no two ways about it. Always the fattest in my class. I hated it and hated myself. Friends' mothers made snide, hurtful comments to me about it. And one day I had exactly the same experience as your DS, @randomusername03 when a visiting school doctor made me strip to my vest and knickers, weighed me and cross-questioned me in a very hostile and disapproving way about what I ate and how much. No parent present or permission asked. I was desperately upset, went home and sobbed to my mum over it. Must have been about 8, maybe 9?

That sort of thing is why I lost a drastic amount of weight at 18 and became very rigid in my eating, eventually developing a full-blown eating disorder, existing on 500 calories a day and stopping my menstrual cycle for over a year. Which was hell in a different way.

All of that is past now (although I’ll never have an uncomplicated relationship with food), but that GP should not be making those remarks in front of your DS, trust me. It can do a lot of damage.

My sons always looked overweight, and struggled to get trousers to fit. They are teddy bear shaped. Big muscular bottoms so trousers were a nightmare. Not particularly broad in the shoulders, so their waist looked big in comparison. And a bit of a tummy.
Both quite wide.

As adults they have no trouble with trousers because of the waist/length sizing, rather than age.

They look great. They'll never be lanky, they are shorter, broader men.

A lot of children around this age go through a phase of looking a little bit plump. Puppy fat used to be a very common phrase. Then they shoot up and it all settles down. Could this be an explanation?

Although your GP sounds very over zealous he will be seeing an explosion of overweight and obese children and no doubt it will affect his attitude. I’m a member of a club where I have swum for the last 30 odd years and in that time it has gone from being incredibly rare to see an overweight child to sadly common.

Clearly he got it wrong in your case but IF your DS didn’t grow any taller and continued to gain weight he would be at risk. You know that’s incredibly unlikely but your GP doesn’t.

What exactly did the GP say?

So he has a perfectly healthy BMI for a 12 year old boy

I'd write to the practice manager and point out that the GP was incorrect from a health point of view, and highly inappropriate to discuss a child's body negatively in front of them.

In the red book there is a calculation for predicting height based on parents heights. If you do that calculation and see which percentile that puts a child on at 20 (or whatever the upper age is) and they are in line with that then surely that's a good indicator of their natural height without the possibility of more food being responsible for their higher than average height during childhood.

That sounds incredibly unscientific. We all have genetic markers that come from further back than our parents

There’s a very wide range on either side of the estimated height. My DF was 6’4, DM is 4’10, I have a predicted height range of between 4’11 and 5’10. So anywhere within the normal adult female height range then.

GP said he was overweight, she emphasised overweight several times in the appointment. Demanded to know his diet and you'd think id given ds heroin when i said he gets a 150ml carton of apple juice at lunch time. I wouldnt say she was aggressive but she definitely came across as hostile. Tbh I just wanted out as I didnt want ds to hear anymore than he had.

As for the height thing, Im going by all the boys on my side of the family being tall, all 6'+ . I guess ds could be bucking the trend but I very much doubt it. His cousin who is 15 is about 5'11 already and built very much like ds, solid n sturdy as opposed to being waif like (which ds1 was), not overweight neither imo.

Apple juice is well known as a gateway drink. He'll be on the pomegranate before you know it

Are you 100% sure he is 5’8? Because that is really REALLY tall for a pre-pubescent 12 year old. Significantly above 99.6th centile, meaning he is on track to be over 6’7 as an adult - way taller than your DS1 or brothers.

It isn’t impossible, obviously some people are 6’7, but he would be a good foot taller than the rest of his class, which is a lot.

I was my height now from 11. 5'6.

He might not grow much more in height.

TBF 150ml of apple juice has 15g of sugar in it and none of the fibre that he'd get if he ate the fruit so it's not a healthy choice BUT he has ASD for fucks sake. I was literally just talking on another thread about anorexia in people with ASD. You cannot as a doctor be saying this shit in front of any child, let alone one with ASD who will thrive on the obsession, rules and routine that anorexia brings with it.
I am the first to say just because your child doesn't look fat to you doesn't mean they aren't. But there are far bigger things at stake here. After giving him so much shit about his diet I really hope the dr referred you to a dietician, but they I bet they didn't. Why get someone help when you can just make them feel really bad instead, that'll learn 'em - not!