bmi in a child

[waitingforsomething]

My dd is 3.7 and we are living abroad. Yesterday I had to take her to the gp where they weighed and measured her and came up with a bmi of 15.7 which they then proceeded to tell me was much too low. She is 107.1cm and 17kilos exactly - I don't have my red book with me here but I think it in line with her growth over her whole life.

Is bmi used for children? If so surely it's not the same adult scale?

I thought the ideal BMI range for kids was 15-20 (compared to 20-25 for adults) as their bones are less dense.

Thanks vim. I'm fairly confident she's healthy but I was surprised to get a telling off about her bmi age 3...!

She is just above 75th centile for both height and weight according to WHO charts so sounds perfectly in proportion.

Use the nhs bmi calculaor. She comes out average for her age

You need something like the NHS bmi calculator here

www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/Healthyweightcalculator.aspx

That tells you what percentile she's on which is what you need to know in kids rather than a pure number.

Plug in the details you've given and she comes out as 35th centile. That's similar to my 8yo DD who is small and slender but as healthy as they come. To give you context, the UK NHS start to act when a child is below the 2nd centile for BMI.

Are you living in a country where a slightly built child would stand out compared to the rest of the population?

Thanks all and for the links I feel much better - she's clearly fine! I live in Asia where the children her age are largely very slim but signicificantly shorter than her so perhaps their bmis tend to come out higher as their height to weight ratios are closer? She's a head taller than most of her peers and more matched in height to the age 5-6 class