What constitutes as a "healthy weight" for a four year old these days?

[whalemummy]

I've become increasingly concerned about my (almost) four year old sons' weight over the past few weeks. He was never a small baby (8lb1oz average at birth but gained fairly rapidly) and he was always just above average on his weight scale - hense the "chunky monkey" nickname. But recently I've noticed that he seems to be much larger than all of his preschool mates and his SP (step brother) who is over 6 months older than him and my friends daughter (age 6) is a heck of a lot lighter than my son too.

I'd rather not be worrying about nothing, but then again I'd rather the social weren't knocking on my door and signing us up for fat camp lol!!

He doesn't eat that much rubbish (he gets a small treat once a week, we don't have crisps in the house and the kids do not have takeaways) and we try and be as active as we can with regular walks and trips to the park - plus I don't drive at the moment so we are walking nearly everywhere.

Can anyone give me some advice? Am I missing something? He's in age 4-5 clothes and seems to have gained a belly!!!

Thanks,

Whalemummy xx

Maybe he's due a growth spurt? Little ones tend to grow 'out' before they suddenly grow upwards. But the best thing to do if you're a bit concerned is to grab your red book.

If you measure his height and weight you can plot them on the charts in the back of the book, then you'll be able to see what his weight percentile is. I've just done this as I noticed that my 4 year old DS weighed exactly the same as my 6 year old DD.

It turned out that he was just below the 50th percentile for height and just above the 50th percentile for weight - so nothing to worry about at all .