Overweight/underweight

[angie6147]

Hi everyone

I have one child who is overweight and one that is underweight. Any tips about how to get extra calories into one child without the other child getting extra or noticing. They notice every morsel of food each other get and notice if something is even remotely bigger than the others. There is only 14 months in the children and they are 6 years and 7years. They both do swimming lessons, dance, and gymnastics and go to park 4 evenings a week. It reached a peak this week when one child had an accident and almost needed to be put to sleep and I became really worried of the increased risks with her weight. Iv been trying to play it cool through fear of creating a bigger problem in the long run, but also worried about not doing something now. Any suggestions would be really appreciated xx

Oh, that's a tricky one. Do they currently eat roughly the same amount of the same things? A few possible ideas: if you serve up before putting food on the table, you could add a bit of extra butter/olive oil to the underweight one's food, bit of cream to soup (add milk to the other so the colour matches if necessary), things like that. Are there any times when they eat separately, like a snack before/after separate clubs and you could give them something a bit different without them being able to compare? Or packed lunches for school, assuming they're a year apart? If they both have a cheese and tomato sandwich, say, are they dedicated enough to notice that one has thicker slices of cheese and one thicker slices of tomato?

Really good ideas thank you. Yes I do plate up before bringing to the table, that would work. They are starting on packed lunch this September but previously were on school dinners. Xx