Just got a letter home from the school nurse re: dd's weight

[fireflyfairy2]

She is 115cm & weighs 28kgs.

It says "XXXX weight has gone from 91st centile to above 98th centile. Please contact me to discuss referral to peadatric dietitian"

I know she is a big girl, but she is also tall for her age. She's well built but I didn't think she was overweight.

I am such a failure.

I am about 20lb overweight myself & dh had weight to lose.... I know dd eats very very healthily as I have already lost over 2 stone & she has been having what I have ben eating.

The sensible option is to change the whole families lifestyle to be more active & eat more healthily.. I know we can do that, but I just feel like such a failure at the minute.

Dh thinks it's ok as he had to attend a dietitian when he was young.. but I don't think it's ok. Dh was an obese child & I always blamed his parents when I saw photos of him from childhood... now look what I have done to my beautiful dd I've made her fat, just as I have always accused my MIL of doing to dh

How does she come out on the paediatric charts?

can't believe she didn't cross check the height, talk about wasting NHS money then...so now you get refered, when its not req'd, wasting time and cash now I wonder where my taxes are going....

Yes, but even a tall child might still be overweight.

Go anyway - you are clearly worried about this and if it helps you feel more confident in what you feed your family that's got to be good.

I told her I fed her healthily but I was more than willing to attend a meeting & listen to any advice the dietician had to offer me.

She said she hears it all the time, how children are fed healthy foods, yet are overweight.

I felt like I was being accused of lying.

I thoroughly agree that even a tall child might be overweight. definately.

but I am bloody concerned that they are doing this on height alone. I DO think there is an obesity problem atm but this sort of crap doesn't help the cause.

Also, if they only look at weight, surely they will miss short fat kids, yes?

FF2 - glad you got through in the end. You've received lots of replies and I'm curious as to what you think? When you look at your daughter, what is your honest opinion? Do you think the school nurse has a point or not?

My view? Um.. well she is in age 7/8 clothes & she's not 6 yet. I feel she does have a bit of a belly, but she is well built everywhere. Her feet are a size 13 so she's big everywhere I think.

I do think she would benefit from losing weight, but in no way do I think she is obese. [The nurse wasn't suggesting this either btw]

i believe centile is 1/100 and health visitors keep talking about going up a centile when i think they really mean crossing more than two of the boundary lines.

healthy foods are also very fattening. eating healthily does not mean rabbit food. fruit is fattening if enough is consumed, as is avocado, eggs etc. but it is surely better than being overweight through eating too much processed food.

I dont agree we should give kids overprocessed fat free foods or sugar free foods which contain sweetners. just give your kids full fat, and sugars is fine if the only alternative is sweetener. you dont need to hide carrots in chocolate cake like i've heard someone say recently - just enjoy the cake and have a carrot later. cant stand all this messing around with food, just dont stuff yrself silly. also dont add cream to your food. thats for special occasions only. i know someone who makes sauces with cream all the time and wonders why shes overweight. also walk lots. get a dog.

read an article recently that said most overweight/obese kids are also tall for their age as taking in too much energy means they grow up and out too.

will try and find link to it...

oh and dont keep squash or soft drinks in the house. just water, milk, juice & wine - that will help lose loads of weight. i would rather add a spoonful of sugar to water than squash.

I agree give the kids wine to drink...keeps them calm and slim.

edam, find your comment about olive oil really odd. It's an unsaturated fat, while butter is a saturated fat. Doesn't mean you shouldn't ahve butter in your diet (put some on my toast every morning), but it is probably in general healthier to use olive oil for cooking. And again, don't really understand what you mean by it's not good for cooking with...Every mediterranean person I know uses it pretty exclusively for cooking. It's not terribly good for deep frying since it doesn't get hot enough, but we don't do a lot of deep frying in our house. In fact, my husband who is english makes the most delicious light and fluffy Yorkshire Pudding with olive oil instead of lard.
I would of course not use olive oil for most baked goods since it is not a subsitute for butter in those cases, but for dressing vegetables, sauteeing vegetables, making stews, roasting chicken, lamb, marinating meat and fish....it works really well for me. And interestingly enough, my stepchildren who wouldn't touch a vegetable before they came to me, now eat any vegetable I cook because they love the olive oil, lemon juice (or balsamic vinegar) and garlic dressing I put on them.
fff2, have to agree that the centiles is all a bit silly (when dd was a baby the hv had a fit because she was so tall that she was off the chart...like somehow I was supposed to shrink her) and it's ridiculous that they didn't take her height into account, but I guess the good thing is that it has started this discussion and given you lots of food for thought.

I think the height question might just because the nurse didn't have her notes in front of her (so in that context probably not that unreasonable to ask). One thing that might help is to keep a food diary - most of us are quite poor at keeping track of what we really eat, and it can be illuminating (both ways - I have a tendancy to not eat enough and then feel really unwell). I didn't see the pictures of fff2, but I do think in general little kids should be skinny enough that you can easily see their ribs when they raise their arms. I have an incredibly skinny ds (8) who eats a ton, and a moderately skinny dd (6) who eats much less, and has a tendancy to the sweeter side. I know as they get older it will be particularly important to encourage dd to do lots of active sports, because she just doesn't get so much casual excercise (ds finds it very difficult to sit still for more than a few seconds) and I suspect may have inherited a slower metabolism. My sister and I had a very unhappy relationship during the years when she went through a chubby phase and had to cut down what she ate, whilst I was hypoglycemic, and had to eat a lot to avoid fainting. It's a difficult one - hope the dietician is useful!

What the food police don't tell you is that saturated fats are healthier for high temperature cooking (ie more stable) Not butter though, wiht its low boiling point. In a few years time people will be cooking with lard again, and vegetable oils will be deemed as unhealthy. Olive oil fine for salads or sloshing over foods

I didn't know that about saturated fats. Why at high temperatures?

The high temperature thing for olice oil is rubbish. It was spread around by a website called mercola which is basicaly a marketing website parading as a health site. It is impossible to turn olive oil into a hydrogenated fat on a domestic stove. It takes factory process to do that.

Mercola was spreading scare stories to sell his coconut oil which he made all sorts of wonderous claims for. The AFD made him remove the claims

I think olive oil is fine. We use it although don't that often fry things anyway.

Keeping a food diary is a good idea.

FFF2, the fact that you asked all of us shows how much you care. Good luck with the nurse and the dietician but don't go in feeling like a bad mum, you're a good mum who wants to do the right thing.
The centile thing is mad as a baby my DD shot up to the chubby end of the scale - strange this used to be called 'bonny'! - the HV said to watch it, I nodded feeling guilty and my DH asked why, the HV was stumped and said that we just needed to keep an eye on it, DH repeated 'but why?' and she couldn't answer him. Different for kids though and I think the nurse is only following procedure.
Re the oil thing - olive oil is far more delicious for starters but breaks down more quickly when heated, so keep it for salads. Obviously you can't turn it into a hydrogenated - really bad - oil as this is a process that involves having hydrogen pumped through it, hence the name. But as for frying surely a vegetable oil is best and fried foods should be kept to a minimum. I tend to add a little butter as it makes the food brown more nicely... shame on me!
Any process alters the state of the natural food - making it not so good for us - so the fewer processes the better. But who wants to eat raw veg all the time!
Ian Marber who's a nutritionist who understands that we've all got lives to live once said somewhere that we should try to eat well 80% of the time and not worry about the other 20%. ie the stress that you put yourself through trying to be evangelical about it all detracts from the goodness of your food.
Right I'm now off to start a new thread on my DD's tantrums please read it. I've been distracted by this thread but now feel depressed again about my own problems, please look out for it and say what you think. Thanks

Sorry, no time to read whole thread but my first thought was "well statistically someone has to be on the 98th centile" So I would say that you should concentrate on being a healthy family and perhaps increasing activity if you can while continuing to eat a range of healthy foods, and try not to let the numbers get you down too much.

Liz12 has hit the nail. It's always best to eat healthily most of the time (80%) with the odd treats (20%). I allow my children £1.50 each worth of "tuck" per week, which they can do what they like - that is, eat it all at once or save some for during the week. Other than that, they don't have any biscuits etc, unless we have guests or they are invited to someone elses house. It's worked well so far and none have weight problems and they don't have problems with monitoring what they eat: my daughter will eat 2 biscuits at most and stop there. It makes me wince when I see under 5s especially going on an all out binge because they have been so restricted at home. Exercise is also very important. My children do at least an hour a day of exercise such as cycling, swimming, running, volley ball, tennis, walking and I limit TV watching to 2 hours a day. I think you are a great mum: You're taking the issue seriously and asking for advice to try to find the best solution in the interest of your daughter and family. What else could the school nurse ask for?

Update

The appointment is this afternoon so I will let you all know what happens

And thanks for the support everyone

I have told dd that we just have to go to see a nurse, the same as was at her school & that she will talk to us about healthy eating the same as the lady who came into her school... no big deal. Dd is fine with it

How did the appointment go?

Hi, the appointment went fine.

The dietician was lovely.

She chatted to dd for about 10 minutes, about school family, holidays ets & asked her what she had learned at school. She asked if they been learning about healthy eating & dd said yes.

So then the dietician told dd she was going to ask her a few Q's that I couldn't answer, just dd. She asked her what she had for breakfast, lunch & dinner yesterday & the day before etc.. asked if she could remember when she last had sweeties etc..

She then asked me what our typical menu was like & what dd would have as snacks, if she would have supper before bed & what we did as treats.

I told her she doesn't have any snacks that aren't fruit or if she does, it is in moderation, she can have crisps at grandma's house as I know she doesn't get them @ home etc..

she said that I was quite well informed about dd's dietary needs & that wished all parents would follow through when they got the letter. She also said dd was very tall for her age but she didn't have a height chart there to give me a centile

As she was asking dd about her food etc she had been taking notes. At the end she said at this point she usually gives the parents a list of healthy foods but that she didn't think I needed it as dd's meals were very healthy already & she thought that I may just be giving her too large portions.

So she told me that half a chicken fillet was enough protein portion for a child, one apple was a portion of fruit for a 5yr old but half an apple was counted as a portion for a 2/3yr old. She said that 1.5weetabix/oatabix was plenty for a 5yr old ^ that 3 scoops of potato was too much [I have now decided to give 2 scoops] She also said that on the days dd has dinner ' school she is just to have a snack/light meal at home which I wasn't thinking about & had been giving her dinner at home also

So when we left she said she didn't want dd to lose weight, just to maintain the weight she is at now.

The only thing she said she would change would be to give dd some breakfast juice in the morning along with her breakfast instead of water, as it is nice & refreshing.. I said I didn't like her having sugary foods esp first thing in the morning & she said no, it was fine as it was with a meal & not between meals Will have to think about that one!

dd has to go back in 6 months time.

I bought a smaller dinner plate & will use this one, as 2 scoops of spud would have looked pathetic on our dinner plates!

Sorry, I didn't realise this was so long

spud = potato