Worried about underweight DS

[HeisenbergsHat]

I'm taking DS to the doctor this morning about his weight, just wondering if anyone has any experience of this and what the doctor might do about it (if anything)?

DS is just 7, he weighs 15.5kg and is 118cm tall, the NHS BMI thingy puts him on the 0 percentile. He doesn't even make it onto the weight charts. I think he's lost weight too, I'm sure he was slightly more than that last time I weighed him.

He has very little interest in food and barely eats some days, but he seems to have plenty of energy and doesn't seem especially sickly.

Oops posted a bit too quickly - he's obviously very skinny and very pale (although he is naturally very fair-skinned). He doesn't really eat meat (or beans, or vegetables) so I'm a bit worried about his iron levels too.

I think you are doing the right thing, having him checked out.

Are either you or his father particularly slight in build?
Do you have other children?

It's worthwhile considering some blood tests (including iron). Does he have any physical problems? Stomach upsets? Any kind of intolerance to certain foods (not just dislikes, but reactions to things he eats)?

Good luck today.

I have a skinny one too - always on the 1-2% line on the charts. He is now almost 11 - and just in the last 6 months started to fill out a bit.

I would try to encourage him to eat more veg and meat (what does he eat ?). And maybe try a vitamin/iron supplement.

Mine is a very slow eater - the only thing he eats at the same rate as everyone else is roast dinner. Everything else he takes tiny bites, and often spends ages nattering between mouthfuls.

DS2 was like this for years. Filled out now. He didn't eat much at all, so I made everything that he would eat extra high in calories.

If he drinks, can you make him shakes with banana, cream, almond milk and protein powder etc?

Can you put full fat milk on his cereal; real or peanut butter on wholemeal toast; dip chicken and fish in batter and fry - just so you can get some extra calories into him.

Mix some veg puree into home made burgers made with meat and egg.

That's what doctors advised and it worked for us.

But it's definitely worth getting him checked out in case there's an underlying reason. A friend's daughter was like this and turned out to have a dairy intolerance which made her anaemic and put her off food.

Thanks, I'm a fairly small build, XH is the slim end of medium I'd say, we were both quite skinny as kids. DD is also very slim - but not unhealthy looking (BMI 6th centile).

DS doesn't have any intolerances/allergies but is quite fussy. He eats porridge for breakfast every day, made with full fat milk and a teaspoon of nutella. He has packed lunches at school and will eat half a peanut butter sandwich, 4/5 ritz crackers and half an apple or a satsuma. If I put in extras like cheese or yoghurt then they just come home again. Some days he comes home having only eaten a few bites of his lunch.

Even things he likes he'll only eat in very small quantities, he loves mash, but eats at most 1 ice cream scoop sized portion for dinner, he'll eat a little bit of ham with that and a few peas and then he's full. He'd maybe eat a biscuit or yoghurt for pudding afterwards. Last night he ate about 4/5 oven chips and a scoop of cauliflower cheese for dinner.

He just doesn't seem interested in food, even things like chocolate, he'll eat a bit and then stop. If dinner is something he doesn't like, or he's just not in the mood to eat, then he'll happily leave it and go with nothing for the rest of the evening. He doesn't really eat snacks and very rarely seems hungry.

I cook mostly from scratch and don't have any diet/low fat food in the house, except for sugar free squash. If I try to sneak in extra calories like a smoothie, it's as though he has some internal system for totting it up and he'll eat less later in the day. He has multi-vitamin (with iron) every day.

I'm hoping the doctor will say he's perfectly healthy, just a bit skinny, and then at some point he'll fill out a bit.

My DS2 dropped off the bottom of the percentile chart a couple of years ago. He was put on a nutritional supplement drink by the dietitian which added another 300 calories a day.. We also were advised to increase the calorie content of his diet - butter on potatoes and vegetables, no low fat foods etc. We started giving an extra meal just before bedtime: a glass of milk and some toast or biscuits. The supplements allowed him to catch up on his weight gain (now between 2nd and 9th percentiles) and the changes to his diet plus the additional 'supper' have allowed him to maintain it.

Would he drink something like milkshake or hot chocolate ? One of those a day might help a bit. Snacks like flapjack, or shortbread - rich in fat and some sugar as well (which I'd rather not encourage too much).

I just try and make sure good food is available (maybe eating more often might be an option). I guess it is even more important to make sure they aren't filling up with wasted calories.

But, bottom line - some people just are naturally very skinny and not very driven by food. You can't force them to eat - and making an issue of it might be counter productive.

If he gets full very quickly, could he have lots of small snacks, rather than meals? He might get more calories in that way, because his stomach will have a chance to process the snacks bit by bit?

One thing DD1's dietician said is that you basically have to turn all nutritional advice on its head.

So: No wholemeal bread - too filling. Use white. Same with rice. Use white rice.

Lots of cream, butter, etc. - High calorie, low volume. Avocado is fantastic if he'll eat it. Cheesecake, etc.

Well that was embarrassing, turns out DS is 18kg, not 15.5 . He must have been standing wonky on the scales or leaning on something, my scales are usually accurate, I mustn't have been paying enough attention to how he was standing. So he's skinny, but not worryingly so, and he eats a limited diet but it's not going to do him any harm.

I shall stop panicking, although I might still try and sneak in some extra calories, thanks for all the advice x