Handling overweight and underweight children

[ThereWillBeSun]

We have my DC's in the house full time, and my DP's in the house 50/50. We try our best to treat them all as fairly as possible, and serve a good variety of food, encourage as much exercise as we can etc.

However, no matter how well we try, my DC are underweight (me and their DF are not!) but my DP's are very overweight.

We try to give them well balanced meals, limit snacks etc, but DP's DC get heavier and heavier. We know that they're basically living off pasta, cheese and called at their DM's house, but obviously can't verify portion sizes. There's nothing we can do about that of course, we can only moderate what we do here, but trying to limit their portions, snacks etc, whilst trying to encourage mine to eat more is proving very difficult.

My DC who is most underweight has sensory difficulties relating to being on the autistic spectrum, so I'm just happy to have him eat, no matter what- but how can we balance this with my DP's dc who really need to be so careful with what they eat?

I absolutely don't want this to become an issue that they're under pressure about eating, and there's always an element of "mummy lets us eat whatever we want" which is very disheartening for my DP.

Grateful for any advice!

Following too. My dd is underweight and my ds is starting to get heavier.

Oh bless you @Namechangeforthewin it's stressful isn't it!

How old are they all? Tricky but I think all you can do is model a healthy attitude to food, eat healthily yourself and carry on providing a variety of healthy choices for meals and engage in family exercise if possible. Depending on their ages they might balance out as they get older. Puberty has helped my previously very skinny dds to fill out a little and be less boney as has lockdown as they aren't walking to school. I've read a lot on here how some dc get chunkier before they have a height growth spurt and then they even out. Are they very overweight? Or just larger compared to your underweight dc? My dds looked perfectly normal to me until I saw them next to their peers. But then a fair few peers were overweight so it can be difficult to assess objectively.

Sorry I didn't see this sooner, I've been poorly today!

Yes they're definitely overweight and underweight, going by their centiles but also difficulty with clothing.

So as an example, my DP's youngest age 6 has waist size of 78cm, needs age 10-11 trousers to go round his waist, while lengthwise he needs age 5, in comparison, my 12yo DS needs age 10 for length but they all fall off him without alteration, and his waist measurement is 56.

There's a strong chance of my 12yo not hitting puberty without intervention, and my DP's dc have had a massive decline in their fitness.