Toddler weight

[Louise20231]

Hi everyone, just here for some advice really. My 2 year old daughter is currently under the health visitors and gp because of her behaviour traits linked to autism. She has many but I won’t go into all of them, but one of the main concerns of mine is her eating. It’s beyond picky eating, it’s like an eating disorder such as ARFID. She won’t eat whole food categories, only her “safe foods”, and some days she hardly eats at all. I’ve been to the GP twice about her eating (first time they prescribed her constipation treatment, weighed her and sent us on our way), and to the health visitors once (among the other 3 or 4 times I’ve seen them about her other behaviours) The health visitors have basically said I’m doing all the right things and they’ll come back out in December to have her development check and talk about our concerns etc. they did come out when she was 18 months old to observe our daughter and so has our concerns in which they did share some of our concerns/ agree too. well the doctors have been no help, they’ve said if it did turn out she has autism her eating is probably linked and that they won’t refer her to a peadriatician for her eating unless they can see she’s dropping weight on the centile chart in her red book. Which I understand to an extent, but surely you wouldn’t leave a child to be struggling with their weight before anything is done? She currently weighs 10.4kg and is 2ft 32inches. (2 years old), so I’m worried that she is already underweight and no professionals seems to be bothered. I’m going to phone the health visitors tomorrow to see if I can get her weighed in clinic so it can start to be documented in her red book and monitored. Would just like some advice really or experiences with this as I feel like every professional I speak to just seem to fob me off.

Are you sure your measurements are right?

In some areas you can self refer to dietetics. If your local service doesn’t support DC with ARFID you could ask to be referred to somewhere specialist. Has DD already been referred for an ASD assessment? If not, in some areas you can self refer for that too. If you can’t self refer anywhere I would go back to the GP &/or HV and push for a referral.

Hiya, I’m pretty sure the measurements are right, not great on measuring height but weight is definitely correct. Also I have been back and forth to GP and HV and it seems I’ve got a long way ahead before they’ll refer her for an ASD assessment, they want to see her in nursery etc first. I’m going to continue pushing though because I know nothing will be sorted otherwise

2ft 3 is off the bottom of the close monitoring growth chart (that chart has extra lines the normal charts don’t have) and below the line that states ‘children plotting below this line should usually be under specialist review’. 10.4kg is at the bottom of the chart. At 2 years old, if the height is right, 10.4kg isn’t underweight. You could try to use DD’s height as a way of getting referred as, to me, that is a bigger immediate concern.

Hi thanks for your reply. Not sure if I’ve measured wrong or got the numbers wrong for her height but looking at her visually she seems an average height (she’s only just turned 2). No professionals have ever mentioned her height so I’m not too concerned. I will see if I can get her height measured properly in clinic and then I suppose I would get more accuracy as to weather she is underweight