why is every one worried about fat children. surely skinny ones are just as unhealthy?

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it is quite hard. and yet all the furore is about kids eating tooo much.
what to do with a child who just wont eat?
no breakfast, except perhaps a sip of milk, or a tiny tiny bite of cereal> probly nothing for school dinner. and refusal toeat dinner at home because its got [veg of choice] in it. or is the wrong colour. or htye are not hungry. or some other really really stupid readson.
you can only force feed them to a certain age. and bribery only goes so far.
and then there are the clothes. what to do with an 11 year old with a waist the size of what shops consider a slim 8 year old should be, but height on the 75th centile? is he perenially meant to look geeky because hsitrousers are all three inches too short, or held up by mom's sewing and safety pins? or toddler belts?

force feeding can lead to anorixia, an unhealthy relatinshop with food etc etc. yet the only problem theworld seems to see is that of obese children.

IMo what you need is some kind of psychological help for child and parents and tests to rule out health probs.

Yet it is infuriating for those who cannot get help for a severely underweight child, no matter what you do.

I think the 'issue' around fat and obese people has an element of laughing at the poor and uneducated, helping create 'chavdom' for all our amusement.

the way i finally managed to get seen to was when dd1 had sickness and dirroreah for ten days and couldnt eat anything. she was about two at the time and couldnt afford to lose any weight. but no one would listen to me.

i went to the doctors three times that week and just kept getting told yes she is small but she will put all th weight back on when she is better (it took all in all just over 6 months for her to get back to her previous weight) and i kept trying to explain how skinny she was but no one listened and no one looked at her properly.

after the third appointment i went to see my hv who had always been lovely and listened to my concerns. i stipped dd down to her nappy (she literally was a bag of bones, it wasnt just ribs poking out) and cried. my hv called the doctor in and they considered admitting her to hospital to be tube fed, we had to go daily to be weighed and she had a special powder to put in her water to help the sickness and stop dehydration. i finally felt like some one was listening to me.

once the sickness passed and she wasnt putting the weight back on as they hoped she would we were referred to a peadaitric speacialist and a dietician. but they were of no use. i needed someone to tell me how to get her to eat not what to feed her!!! but she was being monitored more closely and checked for physical reasons on why she wasnt eating.

i think the worse things for me to cope with is what other people thought. she started walking early and by two was walking everywhere and people would point and say ohh that look at that baby walking i know that doesnt sound like much but i felt like screaming "she is two ffs not a baby!!!", at the time she was in age 12-18 months clothes and they were too big! and i started to get sick of people ahhing at her like she was still only one!

we took her abroad when she was 16 months old and i overheard a group of mums around the pool discussing how skinny she was and how we must spend all our time and money on holidays and none on dd as she was obv undernourished and uncared for!!

but as i said she is a lot better now, all im worried about now is these new school dinners and packed lunch rules!

micci, and at hose moms. how dare they?

you can't force feed children - it traumatises them and creates new problems.

Media focus is not just on obesity, but also about starving children.

however living in the Western world, we are more likely to suffer from obesity as it is a Western malady.

There being a focus on this is not ureasona ble - as it leads to adult obesity, heart disease, diabetes etc.

its not a competition is it

I was a skinny child, as is my dd. She just doesn't eat much, and hates greasy/fatty foods. People will comment, but she eats tons of fruit/veg and I don't push it. My mom tried to make me eat and I resented it. I would not eat for days just to make her mad (I know, I was awful).

I also have a cousin who is failure to thrive and has serious control issues, so she uses food. She has weekly massage therapy to help and they sneak higher fat foods in - butter in her scrambled eggs, alfredo sauces, nutella on bread.

It is terrible when a child will not eat, but our doctor says that kids eat when they need to . They will not starve. And generally they outgrow the fussiness, so try not to make food a big issue. Good luck.

Ds is slim. I wouldn't call him skinny as such, but there isn't an ounch of fat on him.
But he is only 4.5. He eats like a horse. Everything and anything.
Jacket potatoes, pasta, spag bol, crisps, fruit, chocolate, anything.
People are astonished at how much he eats.

But then I was the same until my late 20's. Being only 5' 2'' and then 8.5 stone, I was a size 12. Very petite. People thought I would eat like a robin. But I could put away the same 3 course meal as most of my male friends. It was only in my 30's that I started to get bigger.

All I am saying is that , just by looking at someeone, you have no idea how much food, or what kind of foods, they are actually consuming.

People are more worried about obesity because it affects so many people whereas being unhealthly underweight is quite rare. We are so used to people being overweight that obese looks chubby, overweight looks normal and normal looks skinny. Obeseity has now of an impact on society than extreeme skinniness so it bothers people more.