School did height/weight check without my knowledge. Results say DD is 1kg away from 'official' Clininally Obese category. How should i approach school about this?

[LoneStranger]

I am so angry that DD was weighed without my knowledge and would not have consented to this if i'd had a letter. DD is almost 5 and weighed 22kg and 1.4m tall (or short). She is one of the two 'larger' girls in her class.

To look at her, she looks 'full' but not 'fat'. To pick her up, she feels as though she has bricks in her pockets. She doesnt eat a lot of junk food and i really do think she is heavy-boned.

I have tried to restrict her junk food intake since we had the letter and 'leaflet of advice'. DD was unwelll for a few days before Christmas and ate very little during that time. She has just got out of the shower and i can notice that her belly does not appear as 'pot' as i am accustomed to.

I feel so sad, for her and me but feel i should say something to the school. Im not deflecting blame. At the parents consultation I mentioned that DD had said that some of the others had laughed at her once when they got changed for PE. Her teacher said that she considered DD to be 'solid' but not fat. A week later we got the letter.

DD does weekly swimming lessons and 1 and 1/2 hours Stagecoach and is driven 7 miles to and from school.

Any advice greatfully received. Thanks

I think a prob for many people, inc the OP, is not walking/cycling to school - much harder to make up enough exercise for the day...

re snacks - if they knew they'd get a snack when they asked, my two would ask all the time, but the only snack they get is after school (veg sticks and dip, fruit, sometimes a crumpet etc) so they don't bother at other times...

Love the Panto party thing by the way! What a brill thing for her to remember when she gets older

God, panto party sounds brilliant - your lucky dd being a Jan baby!

we have never let veg be optional ever. so they have never really got to the point where they 'won't' eat certain types of veg-they get given it every day and so eat it iyswim.

familiarity is really important. i'm sure i read somewhere that you have to give a child a food about 40 times before they will accept it as 'normal'..maybe annabel karmel said it?

The school didn't weigh and measure her, the School Health Team did. This team will consist of School Nurses and Health Care Support Workers who will have visited the school to carry out growth screening as part of the Child Health Surveillance offered by the NHS. School Nurses take over from the Health Visitor the responsibility for the physical and emotional health of children once they reach school age.

Most areas don't write before they visit exactly, the school may have given you a health questionnaire just before or just as your child started school. If you received that it would have said that all children will be offered growth screening in the Reception Year and Year 6, and that by signing the form you consent to screening. You may well have received it in July or August last year.

Not at all BIWI, my DD loves drinking water - because it makes her feel grown up. She also likes peppers. Im thinking that she possibly doesnt eat or try a wide variety of veg because me and DP dont eat enough. Yes a snack after school is more out of habit than to bridge a gap. Will maybe get her more involved in the preparation and choosing ingredients, which she likes doing (also makes her feel more 'grown up').

I think its a bit ridiculous to weigh children to be honest. A chubby child can have a much healtier diet than a slim child. My ds2 is slim, but I don't think a piece of fruit or veg has ever passed his lips. I much rather he was chubbier but with a helahtier diet. Weight is part of it, but you need to look at the big picture. I think getting a letter home from school like this is quite patronising.

Ahem. Can I just say a biiiig thank you to all on this thread. I feel really warmed by the support and suggestions and advice given here. It has all been well received and appreciated. Thanks again.

that's nice, LS - I really can see why your first reaction would be one of annoyance but it's not a criticism of you, and now it has been brought to your attention you can easily fix it with just a few tweaks - much easier to instill good habits now than in a few years' time.

and also I think to have refused permission would have made more of an issue for her than by letting her be weighed along with everyone else

my dd and ds do Stagecoach too, btw - fab, isn't it? dd's about to move up to the main school and stay for three hours though....eeek

Fairy mum, I don't want to shift the tone of this thread, which so far is everything that MN is great for, but there IS a point in measuring children. To see if they are too fat. Or too thin. Or too short. Or too tall.

Yes, some thin children can eat astonishing amounts of crap and stay thin.

But overweight children, even if they never ever ever eat a sweet or a biscuit or a piece of cake are eating too much food, and not doing enough exercise.

The bigger picture is that we face an epidemic of obesity in this country. And population based intervention, like this, is what is needed to start to tackle it.

It isn't patronising to receive a letter telling you your smear is normal/abnormal is it? Thats an example of a fantastically successful screening program.

The school letter has told LS something that she suspected, but had not directly addressed. It has motivated her to change.

The state cannot rely on parents to take their children to be measured, because, as stated previously, people do not realise when their own, or their childrens, weight is outside of normal.

I guess peoples weight when I see them before their operation, and then check the actual weight. Even doing this 6/7 times a day, I am frequently underestimating adults by 10 or more kg. And when people are overweight or obese, my estimate is usually even more inaccurate. People do no "see" weight clearly.

Thats why we have scales.

The school haven't suggested LS DD does a special run in lunchtime in just her PE knickers, or have a weekly weigh in in assembly, or sent a fruit and veg recognition chart. They have let LS know an important statistic about her DD. And given her an incentive to help her daughter to more optimal health.

LS, if not soup, how about risotto? Pea and ham, rocket and lemon, spinach and chilli?

mmm, risotto

good post, Rempy

stir fries? dd's fave meal in the world is prawn and veg stir fry and even faurly fussy ds (4) wolfs it down

Risotto isn't comparable with vegetable soup though. It's very calorific.

She'll love the 3 hours dinny. My dd moved up just a bit early just before she was 6 and thrived

Hi Lonestar, nice to see you getting support rather than a beating .

I do think that the reason your daughter is being classed as 'almost obese' is because she has a big disproportion between height and weight.

I got DDs red book out, and the centile charts for your daughter read:

Height 1.04m= 9th centile (1 cm above it, actually)
Weight 22kgs= 91st centile.

So only 9% of children her age would be shorter than her, but only 9% of children her age would be heavier than her.

Having said that, it could be surprising easy and fun to encourage an even healthier diet.

I think the key is to keep it fun, and make changes that you are all going to be able to stick to as a family. No point in cracking out Ryvita with marg for dinner.

But could you get a menu together with DD of new things you will try, and give them a points system. So you have a mini judging session when you try it for the first time. Make it fun.

Things like celery with hummus are tasty snacks, too.

LoneStranger just wanted to say thank you for posting this thread. I seem to be in a similar position with my dd as I mentioned in an earlier post (although she hasn't been weighed at school yet). My dd will also be 5 in a few days' time and like you we have a baby also (16 months) so we have a bit in common.

There has been some lovely, supportive advice. Some very informative suggestions made, thanks to everyone.

LoneStranger you are not the only one going through this. Hope you have felt supported on the thread. I am going to continue with my current plan, and this has been "confirmed" on this thread as the best way forward. i.e. try to ensure that dd doesn't gain weight, but eats healthily, exercises, and kind of "grows into" her excess weight.

Good luck. x

Vegetable disguise? Bulk your bolognaise with courgette, mushroom, peppers.

How about a family "try a vegetable that you barely recognise" day once a week.

So go and buy asparagus, or purple carrots, or a beetroot and all of you have to sit and eat more than a mouthful.

It is possible to tackle the fat content of a meal without comprimising on taste too much - so no skin on chicken, lean mince, 1% milk has just gone on sale in Sainsburys and Im sure will be elsewhere, reduced fat coconut milk, spray can for your frying fat, don't ever pour, use lots of herbs and spices to get flavour instead.

I'd just like to give this link to a Radio 4 investigation on obesity again to remind people that some experts in this area think the obsession with obesity etc is being overplayed.

The truth about obesity

I don't know if the OP's child is overweight or not and a sensible diet and more excercise probably can't hurt but w e do need to be really careful about putting children on any sort of diet.

For those who can't be bothered to read the whole article the bit I found most interesting is below - particularly the bit at the end about the stats we use to determine which child is overweight and which isn't

---

One of the most alarming statistics about obesity is that a third of children are now overweight. We are told that weight is now even a problem among the youngest school children.

An estimated 25% of 5-year-olds are now overweight, according to the government's Health Survey for England. That might be the statistic, but some are still sceptical.

When you visit schools it's certainly hard to find these large numbers of overweight kids. Doctor Linda Voss is the co-ordinator of the Early Bird Study, which is looking at the links between childhood obesity and diabetes. Put on the spot in a school even her expert eye failed to spot these numbers of fat kids.

Like many experts, she thinks it's our view of normal that has changed.

"I think I failed to spot the overweight kids because we are so used to seeing overweight kids these days," she says.

But another reason we can't see them could be because the figures are misleading. The figures the government use are based on a 1990 benchmark. It put the weight and height measurements from different surveys on a graph and decided that the top 15% of kids would be called overweight and the top 5% obese. As our children have got heavier, more and more have passed these benchmarks.

If you think the benchmarks seem rather arbitrary, the first to agree with you is the man who came up with them.

"I've taken a graph and drawn a line on it," says Tim Cole, professor of medical statistics at the Institute of Child Health.

"I'm not saying they are healthy and they are not. The idea that these numbers are cast in stone is absolute nonsense. It is all built on sand."

But the UK's way of calculating obese and overweight children isn't the only one. If we adopted the international standard we would roughly cut our figures for fat children in half.

IOS, does your dd do it after school or weekend? dd is going it after school and worry she'll be sooo tired

sorry for hijack, LS

might it work for you to have a veg box? they work out significantly cheaper than buying the same (organic) stuff from a supermarket, but it's the luck of the draw what you get every week. it certainly takes a bit of getting used to in terms of meal planning, but has the benefit of getting you to eat things you wouldn't have considered otherwise, and - most importantly i reckon - makes you base your meals around the veg - if only to get rid of the blessed stuff! many companies allow you to veto certain things you'll never eat. i appreciate it doesn't work for everyone, but for me it's the cornerstone of a healthy family diet.

rempy, yes I see you point, but I think a lot of perfectly healthy children with a bit of puppy-fat will get this letter and that's my worry. Personally I don't own scales and think people are too obsessed by numbers.

puppydetox great tip. I could write a book - 101 ways with organic swede. It was surprisingly good in a veg curry.

I used to ring our supplier and describe what they had sent us and ask them to identify what veg it actually was. (they got used to me). We had a lot of roast veg. I used to say to the woman "oh shall I just chop that and roast it" and she would and say that it would be fine!

tbh i think eating local/seasonal/organic is the best thing i've ever done diet-wise. e.g. it seriously limits how much meat and cheese you eat cos it's so expensive, and with a good box scheme you don't get stuck in a parsnips-again type rut. while dd has her dietary foibles (increasing as she gets older i notice), the fact that she doesn't bat an eyelid at celeriac or fennel must be a Good Sign