Parents in obesity denial

[needmorecoffee]

here

Well I don't have toddlers I have 7 and 4 yos and they drink little (the 4yo) or no (the 7yo) milk. TBH, at a tangent here, I think the amount they drink (of any liquid) is more of an issue than their really quite good diet. I do feed them full fat yoghurts though and school dinners with custard twice a week.

DS is on a quest for macaroni cheese though, and as I bung in a variety of veg, it is a good dish for the children but does very little for my waistline.

I also worry about DS because sometimes (eg at buffets) he is very greedy. And I think he has portion control issues.

I agree reallytired. Positive advice instead of what you can't do. And some decent studies into all the factors surrounding obese children. Portion sizes, exercise, eating from boredom, eating shit cos its quick and easy for tired parents.
So many things.
My 2 boys have an atrocious diet. It went downhill when dd was born cos sher requires 24 hour care and now they are teenagers they cook their own food. They have lucky genes in that they are skinny on a diet that would make a lot of people far but I worry about their arteries and future health. All I can do is hope their previous 13 years of decent food will protect them.
When I was at schoool there was just the one over-weight child. Now its half the class. dd started reception in september and half the class are podgy and about 20% actually obese and struggle to run round the playground. Its disgusting. The school is a 'healthy eater' school but they can't control what the parents do and, its is a well off middle class sort of area. The school dd did pre-school at was local to me so working class/unemployed and it was worse there. dd looked like a sparrow (she is seriously underweight cos of her CP and very tiny).

I think some parents are in denial. My neighbour, overweight by about three stone, keeps telling me that at least her sons are skinny. They're not. They're not overweight, but they're chunky boys with a reasonable covering. Her view of what's 'thin' is coloured by her own weight.

I drop off and pick up my DD (4) at school every day and look at all the mothers/fathers and their children (3 and 4 year olds). There are no obese children at all. However, there are children of very different shapes and sizes - height and width - and parents of very different sizes too and no correlation between the two. Slightly overweight parents can have very skinny children and slim parents can have children with puppy fat.

My sister has three children with her husband. Her eldest has always been extremely slim and is always on the move. Her second is a stocky, rugby playing type. The difference in BMI at the same age between her two sons is staggering. But neither is either under or overweight. They are just different builds.

I don't think BMI applies to kids but surely eyeballs do the job reasonably well!
I used that argument with the paed. He wants to tube feed dd cos she is off the bottom of the charts. But if you look at her, she is thin but not skeletal. Eyeballs much better than charts.

It's a very tricky balance. There are two main eating problems in young children: obesity and eating disorders. Having too much of a focus on the first is surely going to increase the amount of the second? There is a lot of unnecessary anxiety.

I do think inadvertent malnutrition can take place - mainly because we did it ourselves. While I knew kids should be on full fat for the first couple of years, I did end up with a child that had severe toddler diarrhoea for a year which we eventually tracked down to him being a toast fiend (and we had bread that was 50:50 white/brown). It was just too much fibre for a young gut. We're a strictly white bread household now and probably will be until ds2 is well over 5.

I'm "lucky" in that both dses are active and very skinny (in ds1's case, alarmingly skinny at times). But then they come home from school saying "cakes are a BAD food".. "I can't have ANYTHING with salt in" which makes me cross as it tends to make them even more faddy just at the point I'm trying to widen their diet.

I'd much prefer that schools focussed more on healthy balance rather than categorising some foods as "bad" and others as "good" which (to my mind) is meaningless without balance.

needmorecoffee: we had a similar reverse argument with a paed when ds1 was a baby. HV referred us in a panic because ds1 wasn't gaining as much as she'd like. Paed took one look and kicked us out of his office "this child has DIMPLES!"

BMI does apply to children according to the WHO - but the desirable BMI varies according to age (so not the same as adults, and not the same at every stage of childhood).

i wnet to a Swimming gala last night and I noticed the same thing Anna. Children in lots of different shapes and sizes.

Loads of the boys were really muscular. DS looked like a twig in comparision.

I noticed that most children had ribs that showed but their arms and legs varied a lot in size. These were 7/8 year olds BTW. I was amazed in the vairation as they all look similar in clothes. There were a couple of chubby children but not very overweight.

Children are really different. My Ds is desperate for muscles as he wants to be a better swimmer and gymnast!

LOL at your DS wanting muscles .

My DD is very muscular - which she gets from her father and not from me. She walked at just over 10 months and has always been a runner, climber etc and is clearly athletic for her age. She has always had big strong thighs - she was born with them. Lots of the little girls at her school have twig-like thighs. There is absolutely no relationship between all these little girls' thigh muscles and their food intake - it is just genetics.

You do notice their shapes more when they are in their swimwear. DS is thin and not very tall, but he has big bones - chunky knees, wide (given that he is only 7) shoulders etc so when he is dressed he doesn't look as thin as some of his taller, narrower peers, but in his trunks you can see his ribs.

My DD eats cake and biscuits as well as fruit and stuff, she is skinny as anything...as she runs everywhere, does dance, plays down the playgorund for HOURS.
We went on holiday with friends and DD was running off down the hill while friends kid was puffing and panting and yelling "stop" etc.
More focus needs to be put on exercise, DD and my friend's kid eat about the same, DD is a skinny minny, friend's child is sturdier but a lot less fit.
It's the lack of fitness that will show when they are older.
If this carries on the weight will creep up on the unfit children.

What strikes me is how little incidental exercise everyone now gets. Almost all the children at the toddler groups I go to arrive by car and walk hardly any distance at all. My next door neighbour drives her kids to school even though my DS has been walking the same distance since he was 18 months.

I try to walk or cycle as much as possible and also make DS do the same, but I often feel cruel for making him walk so far (in comparison to other children of his age), and I myself wonder why I bothered slogging my guts out when I get to where I'm going, am one of the few who is knackered out and carrying a tonne of outdoor clothing.

I do think food, cooking and portion control are major issues too, but I think school is very poorly placed to tackle these issues. For one, it's a skewed picture, demonising food. For another, it's a rare child that has much influence over the overall family diet so it's very unfair drumming a message in that a child can't really act on in any meaningful way.

What we could do would be stop breastbeating over whether children can read at age 5 FGS and drastically increase the amount of physical activity in the daily curriculum.

I have to admit that i have always been a little over anxious about dds weight. As an obese parent i am so desperate for her not to end up the same, that for the first few years i ended up under feeding her.I am still very concious about it and weigh her about twice a week.I always tell her its to check that she is healthy and never mention weight. I do not want her to become obsessed about weight and diet etc but i will not allow her to become obese,its difficult to strike the right balance and i am not sure i have.

Bozza - your son sounds like my Ds's best friend. He's got big knees too but if you tried to pinch an inch on him there would be nothing. He looks quite sturdy in clothes. The joints look massive compared with my Ds. He just has a more solid build.

I actually worry that my skinny Ds may end up overweight as that's what happened to me!

shivermetimbers, me too! I worry about DS all the time. I'm not quite obese but near it and I worry. All my friends and HV tell me DS is in perfect proportion, but he is quite heavy - he has a solid, muscular build with a big head like his parents so weighs plenty.

I always made mine walk. I think 2 miles is perfectly reasonable aged 2 and upwards. But people wont even walk across supermarket car parks!
I remember walking a mile to the shops with my boys and their 2 American friends. Both the amerocan lads played basketball and some other sport. Neither could walk a mile and were puffing and moaning and complaing. How could a 12 yo not walk a mile?

Agree that walking is good.

I try to get DD (4) to walk either to or from school every day (1.4 km) unless it is raining. And she has three long breaks in the playground with school, and spends another hour (at least) there after school, running and climbing with her friends.

why not rain? Good rain coat n wellies. Kids love rain

Wellies are not an option for school, unfortunately.

It's such a misnoma that health is being ignored, a healthy diet and plenty of exercise is what is important not weight. People might just cut down the the number of chips and chocolate they eat or not eat enough healthy well balanced food.. I think the obesity epidemic is a peculiar way of describing the problem. It's bad eating that's the problem, ignorance and lack of cooking skills.

you carry shoes inna bag. mind you, lot of school shoes are reasonable in rain long as it isn't monsoon like.
We didn't have a car when the older 3 were in reception to Y3 so walked whatever the weather.

We can't leave the wellies at school... and I am not going to carry a bag of wellies around with me on a rainy day

as the school should be encouraging walking then maybe they should have a wellie place. Kids should walk in the rain. They don't melt and it saves on pollution from driving.
We didn't wear wellies when walked in the train, just schoolshoes. But they did have rain coats. Mostly.
dd arrives in school with a full wheelchair rain mac when its raining and they stick it in a cupboard for me. I'll admit to her not wearing wellies though. Or shoes But the other 3 did. We dint have a car. The boys walk now in school shoes and just have to put up with rain. We currently have a car but I'm not a taxi service.

If you weigh your child twice a week she's going to pick up that you're obsessed with her weight whether you mention the word "weight" or not, I think.