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Children's health

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To ignore BMI as an indicator of a child being overweight?

276 replies

HappyHolidays22 · 23/01/2023 20:33

My DD is 4, 5 in 2 months time. She’s tall for her age and looks older than she is because of this. (Just for context, her dad is 6 ft 5 and I am the shortest female in the family at 5 ft 6… so she doesn’t come from small stock!)

Today we had a letter from some NHS service to say that they have done some measurements in school (with our permission) and that she is overweight. Her height is just over 118cm and weight slightly over 26kg. According to the BMI calculator this puts her over then 90th percentile and therefore overweight…

but my problem is that she looks totally in proportion for her height! Never in a million years would I have thought to say she was overweight…

we eat healthily and encourage DD to eat a range of foods (with varying levels of success as I think is normal for a 4 year old).

my question is - AIBU to ignore this BMI calculator/info from the NHS if I believe my daughter is fine? Or should I be doing something to trim her weight down? (Of course, I’d never ever tell DD this as don’t want her to ever have a complex!)

OP posts:
HappyHolidays22 · 05/09/2024 18:29

Violinist64 · 05/09/2024 14:16

Well done. You are a very good mother.

That’s so kind :) thank you xx

OP posts:
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