Obese children "set" before the age of 5 - how to tackle it

[thumbElf]

So, the latest research indicates that 90% of excess weight is put on in girls before the age of 5, and in boys it is 70% before the age of 5.

One mother thinks that parents should just be told, straight, that it is down to them to ensure that this excess weight gain doesn't happen - but will this work?

There so often seems to be a backlash against the "nanny state" when parents are put in a culpable position for their children's weight issues - which then gives people an excuse to say "I'm not being told by any Government how to feed my children, they're my kids and I'll give them what I want to."

What do you think? Will people backlash against it or take advice to help their children?

Castille, you have just rather illustrated the point - it ISN'T normal any more, and if teachers don't bang on aboutteach it at school and parents don't know it at home, when and where are they going to find out?

Much though I loathe the DM, and definitely do not take its word as gospel (rarely read it unless directed to bits of it), I post this link on some survey that showed about 10% of parents these days believe that jaffa cakes count as one of the 5 portions of fruit and veg they should be having a day (as a bare minimum).

SOMEONE has to take responsibility to teach the population about what constitutes real food, fruit and veg etc.

Oh I know thumbElf, and it is a tragedy that things have got so horrifically bad.

So the govt's policy relies heavily on pester power, is that it?

Jamie's attempt to teach a whole town to cook was a better way to go - aiming at adults has to be more effective.

Does 'home economics' or whatever it is called nowadays play any part in the curriculum?

I learnt some really useful stuff in Home EC.

i was told a few years ago that Home Ec had degenerated to the point of "how to warm your tv meal in the microwave".
I don't think it was strictly true, but it was sadly ironic.

Isn't Home Ec against H&S now? To say nothing of the running costs...

I learnt my best-ever risotto recipe at school - still use it today.

bring back Home Ec and nutrition lessons!

Home Ec, my dd1 did it at school in the last two years and it was really reather fab. Taught about making your own dishes - and the value of food, fruit and vegtables. Certainly not heating up food but making meals from scrath and making the recipy.

I would like to see health and saftely di a running jump and a lot more clubs come back. Unfortunately clus after school or in the eve for teenagers and children as the people running them had to end up doing so much paper work - yet they gave their time for free so gave up the clubs and they ended.

Parents could get together and run clubs after school, football, netball, rounders, running - for everyone that enjoys it.

Children when I was at school where eating a pile of junk - mostly and they did lots of sports, running and walking around so didn't on the whole get fat.

I remember packed lunches around the table stuffed with crisps, chocolate bars and pot noddles (I was allowed one chocolate bar once a week in my packed lunch ) I didn't go to a state school.

Getting active and reducing intake of sugar and fat will have a positive effect on our dc now -then they will pass on the message to their children.

Also get councils to ban new estates being built without pavements - how can children walk around the estate to visit friends without a pavement to get their safely

no pavements?! How do they walk to school?
I am shocked by the number of kids who get driven to school, even when it isn't raining. Or the fact that a mile is considered 'too far' for a child to walk. Any healthy child over 2 should be able to walk a bloody mile.

That's terrible.

I understand the impracticality behind adding pavements to narrow country lanes but new developments MUST have them.

Is the idea of new housing estates without pavements a bit like the Dutch idea of Inclusive Streets, where cars and bikes and pedestrians and children playing all give each other space?

Not that I think it works in the UK culture but maybe that's the plan. My friend has just moved into one, there clearly were pavements which have been grassed and drive-d over, which is really bizarre.

It is a prevailing attitude though, isn't it - if there's the slightest hint of rain jump in the car. If it's more than a 10 minute walk, jump in the car (for some of course the time allocation is even less, for others it's more).

I was going to walk DS to gymbabes (in the pushchair, he couldn't walk then), but worked out it was a 45 minute walk. Not un-doable, but difficult first thing in the morning, when I personally find it hard to get organised far enough ahead of time - much worse with DS! So we do take the car for that, but almost everything else within a couple of miles I will walk to. In the rain as well - DS has a pram cover, so why not?

But then I always got myself to school, senior school was 1 mile away - I usually cycled. My bro and sis went to a school on the same road and were driven by my mum every day, pretty much. And they were late every day (time non-keeping runs in the family). My sis barely walks anywhere and is morbidly obese; my bro sits most of the day at a computer and is obese too. I don't do much now, since getting sciatica a few years ago, but am still a size 12/14 with intent to get back to size 10/12 when I stop bfing.

One thing that needs to be dealt with properly is the issue of fat - not all fats are bad for you. Low fat diets are not the answer. Low sugar diets are better (excess sugar in the body --> fat); a level of unsaturated fats are required to maintain body function properly and to increase fat turnover. So no point in ditching the olive oil, or the high quality veg oils, and certainly not the oily fish - all these are better for you than otherwise.

Cynical me thinks that the idea of no pavements saves thousands of ££££ for the developers, as they dont have to put pavements in and the extra space saved will get another row of box houses in to sell.

Most of the dc on the estate will go to the local state school and will either walk or bus, a few will go by car.

So they will need to walk off the estate on the road and once of the estate there will be pavement to walk on.

the car rots your brain I reckon. Someone said it was 'impossible' to get small children or shopping on a bus. Impossible to walk a toddler or two across a carpark.
Neither are impossible ffs. Drivers are so used to their large wheelchairs their legs have dropped off.

legless school run its called, everyone knows what the school roads are like - cars everywhere, parked on corners, yellow lines and double and triple parked.

Goverment get a nice lot of tax back from the leggless parents though, so why would they want to instigate change of practice.

If you where taxed to take and pick your child up from school there would be uproar. Yet volunteering to pay tax everytime you drive to school is ok to add to Gordons coffers.

Park a mile away and walk the rest, even park half a mile away and walk the rest.

Dont line Gordons pockets

thumbElf sorry for the delay in replying to your question (have been working LOL)

It's very difficult for us as health professionals to get parents to realise there is a problem with their child's weight. I'm not talking about children that are a little heavy, or tall, with weight proportional to their height. I'm talking about children who are significantly overweight i.e. their weight is at least 2 centiles higher than their height.

We send a letter that is pretty blunt in my opinion, but then there's no beating about the bush. It basically says 'your child is overweight, here is a leaflet about healthy eating and exercise (NOT dieting! diet is a 4 letter word IMO!) and phone us on the above number if you want more info, advice or support'.

Virtually no parents respond. And many of those that do phone just to tell us to fuck off and butt out of their business, what their child does/weighs/looks like is up to them etc etc. (These are parents that have consented to screening by the way).

It is such a challenge. We work with the schools to promote healthy eating, exercise, self-esteem and self-respect, as well as advising on situations where a child's weight is impacting on their schooling eg they can't manage PE or can't join in games in the playground.

I really believe that parents are in denial, but it is perpetuated by society. We have this bizarre dichotomy in that adult females are expected to look like pre-pubescent children yet we expect even babies to be chubby. You rarely hear someone describe a slim baby as cute whereas chubby ones are often cooed over and told they look like a healthy baby, look at those chunky legs etc. Then we make constant excuses for overweight children - he's just solid/chunky/muscly, she'll grow out of it, it's just puppy fat, oh but I can't refuse her a treat etc.

Combine that with a lack of exercise, over reliance on cars/pushchairs, fear of letting children outside to just run around and you have a recipe for disaster. It's cheaper (and easier) to feed your kids crap from Iceland than to make them fresh healthy food with lots of fruit and veg. A whole generation has no idea how to cook a basic meal. Clothes are bigger. People think playing on a Wii Sport is exercise.

It's a socially complex problem and I don't think there are any easy answers. Education can only go so far.

Thanks Sidge - sad, isn't it?

I agree that parents of fat DC are in denial. It is quite noticeable that those who refuse permission to have them weighed in year 6 are the parents of overweight DCs-they don't want it pointed out and they don't do anything about it.

In DD's primary school, out of about 90 girls there is one girl who is obviously overweight, and then about 3 or 4 who are verging on over weight. The vast majority are really slim, some skinny little things.

I don't see all these big children on the whole. Maybe we are lucky here.

Hulababy - sometimes it's quite hard to see a child is overweight unless you see them undressed. The children in DH's family are like that - they carry a lot of weight around their middles, but when they're dressed they don't look obviously fat. I've seen them in their pants and I know that it's not right that a child of 8 should have a big wobbly gut that hangs over the top of their trousers.

My SIL's will not accept their children are overweight - they tell them they're just 'big' and let them eat whatever they like. They think that as long as their children are reasonably active (they are) they can eat what they like. I tend to disagree. If children are obese they need to eat less.....

I also have a rather plump little girl. She's always been big. DS has slimmed down slightly now and has come back onto the weight chart, having soared off the top as an exclusively breastfed four month old!

She gets tons of exercise but I really worry about repeating patterns my parents did with me. My entire family are overweight and I'm the only one whose been able to control their weight to a reasonable level, we all comfort eat and I can see that it seems 'easier' sometimes to just give DD crap food because frankly, sometimes it's all she'll eat in a day.

I also have PCOS and there is a lot of evidence that it is inherited and daughters of mums with PCOS are more prone to excess body fat and infertility and all the problems of PCOS and that obviously makes the whole thing guilt ridden, I could not only fuck up her childhood by making her the fat kid in class (as I was), but also her chances of becoming a mother when she's an adult.

And the whole thing scares the crap out of me. I know a lot about nutrition but day to day, it's hard. I'm exhausted, I have a baby and a toddler and while we cook proper good food every day, she doesn't eat a whole lot of it and instead will happily live on toast, breastmilk and chocolate buttons she coaxes out of DH

She's only two. I'm trying. I don't feel able to talk to HV, doctors about it without getting trite 'well have you tried switching to semi skimmed milk' (yes) or 'let her run about' (every tried getting a toddler to sit down for more than two minutes?)

I am HORRIFIED at the idea of my children being weighed at school - they aren't cattle. I think it's totally counter productive. Kids know they are fat and they hate it and being labelled and then given a leaflet/letter home isn't going to do more than make them feel more shit about themselves than they did already

gabygirl - I have spent a lot of time around these children and seen the majority is their shorts/t shirts for PE, etc. Honestly, they are just not very many over weight girls in DD's school at all at present. If they are then they are hiding it very very well.

WMMC - when we weight and measure children in school we don't mention weight at all, we tell them we want to see if they have grown, how big and strong they are etc. (Obviously in Year 6 screening we are a bit more mature about it!) If a child refuses to be screened then they return to class with no fuss.

The letter doesn't go home with them, the results are processed back at the office, checked by a school nurse and then sealed in an envelope. We then send back all the results (sealed) for the school to send home. (saves us postage!)

Certainly in Reception the children don't know they're fat. By Year 6 they are a little more aware usually as a result of being teased by their peers.

They certainly aren't labelled, no-one except the nurses and the parents get the results, and unless the child asks we don't tell them. Our intention certainly isn't intended to make them feel shit , we aim to inform and educate their parents in an attempt to promote a healthy lifestyle.

Sidge, I'm sure you work very well to be sensitive but I can remember starting school and noticing I was fatter than the other kids and I don't think I'm that unusually perceptive

Can you see that most parents of a fat kid are aware of it though, and either they share the problem and so it's the whole family that needs help, or they may well be unwilling to acknowledge it?

Perhaps involving parents in school sports or activities which got them off their bums with their children so it became part of their family routine (egg and spoon race - teach the little buggers to cook the egg first - hey it's a nutrition lesson too )?

But I just don't see why a school should have the right to weigh my child.

But most parents aren't aware of it though. They don't necessarily see that their child is very overweight, or they don't care. The minority that do are the ones that are most receptive but they are few and far between IME.

And the school doesn't have the right to weigh your child at all - the Child Health Service (or Team, the name varies between areas) offers screening of growth, hearing and vision to all school aged children. This comes under Health provision, not Education. It is the NHS that is weighing your child (if you have consented) not the school.

You are totally entitled to decline such screening for your child.

wmmc - you clearly have a lot of baggage from when you were a child, I am for you - I had a friend who was overweight and the other kids were truly evil to her, so I can guess what sort of thing you went through.

But: I think you are carrying that baggage through now, and please be wary of transferring it.. your DD is only 2 now, so she doesn't know anything about it yet.
The school and health professionals aren't trying to label or pick on anyone, they are trying to help everyone and get some useful statistics at the same time - I think your horrified reaction is to your own feelings when you were a child, rather than to the actuality of what they are doing it for.

Sorry, that was a bit rambly, hope it made sense, and it wasn't at all intended to be mean so I hope it doesn't come across that way.

How does one tell parents their kids are fat if they don't want to hear or say 'you'll turn my children into anorexics if you weigh them'?

Its just going to get worse with the level of denial about.

From WMMC 'I am HORRIFIED at the idea of my children being weighed at school - they aren't cattle. I think it's totally counter productive. Kids know they are fat and they hate it and being labelled and then given a leaflet/letter home isn't going to do more than make them feel more shit about themselves than they did already '

So what do you suggest is done? If kids already know they are fat they are probably unhappy but no-one is helping do anything about it. Children cannot take control of their own diet and will overeat and keep on doing it. The problem will get worse and worse.
I don't see weighing as counter-productive. Siething has to be done or these t=children will grow up prone to heart disease and diebetes and whatever and, if we become more like the US, will be sueing their parents for 'making them fat and neglect'.

absolutely agree. Denial all very well, sensitivity all v well but shouldn#t be at the xpense of the kids' health! Diabetes is a nasty, life-long disease!