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

[HappyHolidays22]

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!)

To be honest, I’d pay attention to it. I have a similar aged son who is slightly taller and 21.5kg. He isn’t a thin kid by any standards. He is a solid unit. Another 5kg on a child that height would be overweight to me. I wouldn’t be rushing off to the GP or anything. I’d just be making dietary changes at home and then increasing the physical exercise a lot. My guess is she may be too sedentary? The diet you posted wasn’t perfect (but who has a perfect diet, right!?), so unless her portions are extreme, upping the exercise may help. What does she do for physical activity? I do find some people fall into the trap of thinking that because a 5yr old is playing at the park they are exercising, but I find they need a bit more than that.

OP please don’t panic or feel guilty. There’s always threads on here about how parents of overweight children are selfish and cruel etc and in my experience that’s rarely the case. Usually it’s a case of parents trying to do the right thing but getting into bad habits.

Both my kids were chubby babies (EBF) then chubby toddlers. I worried endlessly. Honestly read so many books so much research. I ended up reading Ellyn Satters book which helped so much. My eldest has naturally just slimmed down over time and at 5 is now in the healthy category. However she is not skinny and you can’t see every bone in her body! She’s strong and athletic looking (very active and does gymnastics). Youngest is 3 and still very chunky. We have ditched the pram, she’s very active (despite being more lazy than the eldest!). She eats healthy nutritious fool and we’ve cut out sugary snacks. It’s really lifestyle changes and being active I think. We don’t use the car much, we walk and cycle.

But please don’t beat yourself up make minor changes. It must be easy for those with kids with
massive appetites but skinny as a rake- sadly everyone is different!!

Look at this advert for Pears Soap from the 1920s, and how slim the kids are:

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2303212/amp/Johnny-Hill-dies-Face-Pears-soap-grew-D-Day-hero-dead-91.html

Now they would be called ‘emaciated’, but actually they were perfectly healthy.

My 9 year old weighs the same as your daughter, and is 135cm.
BMI is a good tool for the majority of the population.

I agree with this. My children are all extremely tall but were fine at the health checks in reception and year 6. They were on 50th centile for their height. It sounds like her weight is more than it should be for her height.

If she is under 5 you can contact the health visitor

My DD who is 6, is slightly taller at about 121 cm but nearly 6 kg less at 20.5 kg. She is slim but not overly so. Don’t beat yourself up though - plenty of time to make healthy changes. My DS went through a slightly chubby stage when he was about 8/9. We just cut out unhealthy snacks and it soon fell off.

Realising how short my child is 😳 my 8 year old boy is only 122cm...he weighs about 24kg.

Maybe a bit more after Christmas but we're cleaning up our diets now and concentrating on eating healthy. Not that he notices 🤣

Why would you ignore it? You’re storing up future problems if you do. Address it now & help your child get healthy. I know so many parents of overweight & obese children who think their child looks fine, when they don’t.

This is not how the centiles work. They shouldn't match as height and weight don't vary in the same ways.

They're comparing across the range of all children. If you look at a class of children there is a natural upper limit to height at any age.

98% on height is as tall as the two tallest in a hundred children of an age range.

98% on weight is as heavy as the two heaviest in 100 children. Weight can just rise and rise in a way height just does not.

How do you know they were perfectly healthy?

I would cut the snacks and daily puddings too.

Well he lived til he was 91!

I weighed and measure my children earlier as it happens. Your daughter is as tall as one of my children but he weighs 21kg. He is 7. I would play close attention to her diet and not look for validation.

Read this. The article is old but the consultant paediatrician who's quoted also advised the Govt on obesity and said you should be able to see a 10-year-old's ribs.

My 6yo is 115cm and 16kg, my 4.5yo is 100cm and the same weight so this thread has been helpful for me. The little one feels solid whereas the older one has always been slim.
I remember being 3.5 stone in year 6 at school, so 22kg, legs like a bird then!

I think it’s because your her parent that you can’t see it. I suspect if we saw her we would probably all think she was too heavy. My child is nearly 5 stone and 11 years old. Her year 6 check said she had a healthy bmi. I think you have a good attitude about it now you are aware and she’ll be fine.

My kids take medication where we have to carefully watch weight. Iv been told you should be able to see their ribs as good indicator of not carrying too much weight and should not have a pot belly

Your 4 year old weighs more than my almost 9 year old !
Nobody looks at their own children and see thing's wrong but remember the people doing the weight check's follow guidelines before contacting parents.

BMI is a crude measure, but doesn't really start to have the potential to be misleading until after puberty when it can be inaccurate for very muscular individuals.

I would cut out the toast for supper, 100 extra calories a day adds up over time.

For children's BMI you need a centile chart as what sounds a normal BMI in an adult can be obese in a child Children aren't meant to look chunky. It's best to tackle obesity early

She can have dessert. Pick low calorie fruit ice lolly or low sugar jelly with dollop of yogurt.

I rang my Health Visitor about this as I have a similarly tall young child who, when I put her weight in it comes up in the 95th centile overweight range of the BMI calculator. And she is clearly not overweight. She eats home cooked food, stops when she has had enough, has treats occasionally in small portions, and gets tons of exercise. She's in larger than her age clothes but she's also got really big feet and everything just looks in proportion.

She reassured me very much and said they would only consider weight to be a problem and would intervene with a child if they were "off the scale", i.e. over the 100th centile. Or if their height was much lower down the scale. She said the centile scale is to show the range of "normal" and not to worry and just carry on leading a healthy lifestyle with her.

What did your HV say was the point of the scale then and doing the BMI for children then?

Honestly, that's bad that HV would say that to alleviate any awkwardness than say that 95th is too heavy.