Year 6 children weigh in and measurements

[Yoyo2021]

Hi all,

Just received a email about the nhs coming in to weigh my child’s year group and measure height etc.

It said this will be done in a private room.

I’ve opted out following the link.

I just think what’s the point my child isn’t under weight or over weight!

If I had cause for concern I would go to the doctors!

AIBU

Should probably add - partner and I are both below average height, we are from generally short families although there are the odd family member on both sides who are comparatively tall - my gran was 6ft but all her kids are short!

We do have some overweight family members but nobody is excessively large.

I'm not sure, and obviously parental height will make a big difference but I'd ignore the health visitor and listen to the paediatrician, they are the experts. 9th-25th centile for weight is fine isn't it anyway? The health visitor probably just looks at the difference between height and weight and thinks he's underweight because of the big difference but if he's a healthy weight then feeding extra meals is a bit silly.

Ah missed your second post. Definitely no extra meals then! But if he was born very long and remained on that centile then perhaps he's just an outlier, overtall children because of excess food would be normal height children who shoot up far higher than normal for their age not children that were always tall as obviously he wasn't overfeeding as a newborn! Perhaps he takes after your gran, has he been given a predicted adult height?

@Onthenosecco my daughter was like that as a baby. In her case the HV noted the anomaly, then looked at her... and said its because of the legs!

Shes now at Secondary school. Still very skinny (the Yr6 check had her at the bottom end of the healthy child bmi centiles). But very healthy.

I believe there is correlation between gymnastics and ED?

I don't get the upset over this. I would rather know if there was a problem I'd missed/been blind to so I could seek help and make changes. I do think it would be worth taking a few more measurements to weed out which DCs really are 'just muscular' though, both to shut down parents who use it to dismiss their DC's obesity and to stop sporty but underweight DCs from creeping into the 'normal' category. Wrist and waist circumference would make it clear how much of the weight was chub.
One of my DCs is very skinny, and in the past has needed to have further investigations following a visibly noticeable drop in weight. These were accepted as needed by the Dr as her BMI centile was so low. She now is older, does a lot of sport, and is very muscly (you can see her muscle definition very clearly because there's no 'insulation' over the top), so I'm not confident that if her weight dropped again she would fall far enough into the 'underweight' category to get the help she'd need, even though when she gets like that it looks like her ankles and wrists are so unfeasibly thin, they should snap. Weight and height combined with a few other measurements would give a better indication of the extent of the problem.

I also don't understand how it is damaging to the DC either. Why would you tell them the bald truth? You protect them from the starkness whilst promoting positive changes and behaviours, surely? A bit like 'Stranger Danger' - you give an edited description of the Why, but a solid understanding of how they need to act. When DC was having Drs appointments and blood tests for her weight loss, I couldn't hide there was a problem but I could give a very edited and woolly reason whilst promoting how healthy it is to eat plenty of avocados and peanut butter. Though TBH if I got a letter saying obese or underweight but though it was borderline so DC was blissfully unaware, I would just lie, say the result came back normal, and make lifestyle choices subtly without their knowledge (eg changes to portion size). It is not in DCs best interest to always know everything.

Everyone I know who opts out has fat kids.

Just saying

I also don't understand how it is damaging to the DC either

Me neither

Unless the damage - which affects the entire post-War generation as this programme has been running since the 40s - is an endemic ill of this society. Which of course it hasn't

@BrokenAndAfraid - dd(11) is Y6 and 5'5". Also well established boobs and periods. Plays football several times a week, smell appetite (although sweet tooth).

She also came back as overweight. There is literally not a scrap of fat on her. I put the weight/height data the school nursing service provided into the adult and child BMI calculators they'd linked - she wasn't overweight on either. She also told me they'd weighed her in her clothes and shoes! And the data the school nurse provide was wrong. She was 2 cm taller and 1.5 kg lighter when I measured her. I'm an engineer. Pretty certain my meaurents were right and scales/height chart properly calibrated.

Yeah - I think 57cm was around the 99th centile at birth anyway. So he’s always been long and slim!

He’s not been given a predicted adult height - my daughter is predicted to be 5ft1 though, she’s low centiles for both height and weight - which makes his tallness all the more surprising (they are full siblings, both weaned on a very similar diet)

The “issue” was because apparently children should be on similar height and weight centiles. Which is why I think my daughter who has always been between 2nd and 25th centiles for height and weight wasn’t flagged up, yet my overall larger son was. So basically they wanted me to over feed him til he was overweight as well as tall.

What effective policies have been informed by this data in recent years? Out of interest? anyone actually know?

Yes it’s definitely the legs here 😂 I can’t get trousers to fit him because he needs 18-24m for length but waist wise he’s in 6-9 months. He rocks a lot of accidental capri pants 😂

Very silly then! Good thing you ignore the hv and listened to the gp and paediatrician.

Just received ds letter of results back. This didn't include (I think this is new?) if they are over or underweight just the height and weight and a link to bmi calculator so the parent can check if they want. Thought this is an OK compromise to limit kids seeing a letter saying they were overweight (although you do get a follow up letter if they aren't a healthy weight hopefully playground results sharing might have stopped by then and more chance to hid it). Not perfect but better.

I agreed to it as do think the data gathering is important to monitor trends.

I've also just played with ds height in the calculator that the letter links to and it is definitely taken into account on the percentiles. Shaving 4 inches off sent ds from healthy to overweight

Annoying that we have an obesity crisis and front-line health professionals are giving obesity promoting advice, isn’t it?!

Also many mothers wear the “big” baby (not speaking about newborns here - I mean weaning aged!) badge with a weird sense of pride and look down on “small” (aka average sized) babies - you always hear glamorisation of chubbiness in babies and toddlers “oh look at his rolls!” “Fat babies are the cutest” and people actively view slim children as somehow unhealthy/inferior (it’s more socially acceptable to tell a parent to “feed their kid a sandwich” than it is to tell a parent to feed their children less)

Thank you for your parenting advice on a conversation I had with my child 11 years ago...

'The girls at school were talking about getting letters from when we got weighed, what did mine say?'

'It said that you are heavier than average. They work out a number by just using your height and weight, it's not very accurate because people are all different shapes and sizes. You are really strong from all the conditioning you do at gym, you've got strong muscles compared with other people in your class. The number they work out doesn't take into account that muscles are heavy, so it's not something you need to worry about'.

In my experience, having a perfectionist/competitive personality type is more of a factor in EDs than physically being a gymnast or ballet dancer or track athlete - virtually all the kids we encountered during my daughter's treatment had similar personality types. Many of them also did competitive sports or dance at a high level but I think it's their personality type that gives them the focus to do well at them, rather than the sport 'giving them' and ED.

It was probably a lot more to do with the girls at school discussing the letter and drawing conclusions/making comments... 🤷‍♀️

In the privacy of your doctor's office.I think I made that pretty clear.

Why though? There are strict guidelines about how this scheme is carried out, schools need to make available a room where children can be weighed alone but with the relevant staff present for safeguarding purposes. The staff who do the weighing are professionals and bound by the same confidentiality and whatever else as doctors. Surely its more worrying for a child to go to the doctors to be weighed than have it done as a tiny part of the school day when their peers are having the same?

So every year 6 should have to make a GP appointment to be weighed so that the government can study population level changes in weight?

There's enough pressure on GPs without adding appointments just for weighing and measuring children. Must more efficient and cost effective to do it in school, and then every child has the opportunity not just the ones with parents who have time to take them to the doctor and a doctor who has time to see them.

If the BMI was way out of the normal way there is no way she is not overweight, Broken. How old is she? Huge boobs on a really young girl AND early puberty develop screams “overweight” to me.

That's not correct. They do measure their height.

Yes, this! The only girls in my class at primary school who started their periods by the end of year six were the overweight ones.

(My sister started in the summer after year six and seems to be an anomaly as she was very skinny and petite... And starting her periods didn't then make her overweight 🤣)

There is loads of research that basically shows that as the reason for younger periods is obesity.

DD started hers a few days after the equivalent of year 6 ended, but she's weighed and measured every year and is always around the 50th centile. Really wasn't expecting her to start that young because of that fact!