Got a letter today telling me that the boy is overweight. He’s a strapping 10yr old without a scrap of body fat on him who does a load of sport.

I’m surprised that this isn’t more sophisticated to make some further assessment of BMI. It seems weird to go to all this effort and not make the assessment a little better.

Are you being forced to do anything next? And didn’t we do this last week?

If not, just bin it secure in the knowledge that he’s not overweight.

I’m impressed schools are testing kids at all, hopefully the parents of the real fatties will take note!

Cheers,
Jamie

Genuine PC Gone Mad.

“overweight” is purely someone’s interpretation of a height/weight chart.

They should stick with the terms Fatso or Porky Pig which isn’t open to interpretation, and like you said your child is no porker.

More parents in ‘No way my little precious is a tubster’ shocker.

Not sure how you can be overweight on the BMI as a child and not have an ounce of bodyfat – does he do weights or something? Only really muscly folk like say rugby players or rowers come out as high on BMI without having a number of bellies and chins – have you never been on a STW group ride?

IME of having to tell this to parents – often clearly overweight themselves…they were often horrified and aghast that anyone could think the child [ or them] was overweight

I have no idea what the details are int his case and it is a few years since i had to deal with this but most parent denied it and though there kids were fine

Its just puppy fat was another favourite for a child who was nearly double his ideal weight.

I know that I could lose a few pounds 🙂 especially before riding the Raid Alpine this summer.

The odd thing is that this doesn’t appear to be BMI but just simple weight vs height. I can understand the sense in this whole procedure but I wonder how many kids are labelled as overweight unnecessarily?

Plus no. I’m not a parent in denial. MiniG is just a muscly little fella – as I can tell when he rugby tackles me.

this doesn’t appear to be BMI but just simple weight vs height.

Isn’t “weight vs height” a pretty accurate description of BMI??

(Sauce)

I can understand the sense in this whole procedure but I wonder how many kids are labelled as overweight unnecessarily?

I’ll lay odds that it’s significantly less than those who are labelled as overwieght correctly. I say this as someone who himself could stand to (and currently is) lose some wieght.

Tell the school to naff off as it’s none of their naffing business.

Had the same with my 6 year old daughter last year…

I think any fears about her being overweight were put to one side when she absolutely mullered the opposition in the sports day sprint a few weeks later.

My 10yo daughter is becoming overweight. Trouble is, she’s at that age where one moment she’s a bit chubby, the next she’s grown half a foot and looks like a beanpole. The issue is whether she’s chubby or beanpole when the music stops for the last time.

My problem is how to deal with it. She doesn’t overeat (OK, clearly does or she wouldn’t be overweight currently) but by that i mean doesn’t snack incessantly, eats a decent breakfast (I make sure of), school lunches and a decent tea, doesn’t eat masses of junk food, and gets reasonable amounts of exercise for a girl her age. At what point does she have to go ‘on a diet’? Anyone had to manage that with their own children, because she’s becoming body conscious already, and i don’t want it to become a big issue. Equally, i don’t want her to have weight issues all her life like her mum and dad have.

BMI scale not good for 100% of people/kids shocker!

According to the BMI I am overweight at 5’7″ and 11.5 stone, I’ve never been described as fat – quite the contrary with a 30″ waist and I don’t do body building or such like.

BMI normal ranges are different in children.

It isn’t just 20-25, but rather lower.

See Here for calculator

And Here for boys chart

I see BMI is basically a starting point for a conversation about weight… It definitely needs context…

im not 100% convinced the BMI thing is right. i am 12st 8lbs and 5ft 10 and just over weight apparantly. i could lose 11 kilos and only be in the middle of ‘normal’!!

Only really muscly folk like say rugby players or rowers come out as high on BMI without having a number of bellies and chins

Or just tall or short people. BMI works reasonably well for average heights but poorly outside of that.

BMI is definitely a blunt instrument. Even taking fat measurements and interpolating a % is not infallible.

5′ 9″ (barely) and 10st 9lbs or so – plumb normal..

Maybe rather than just burry your head in the sand it would make sense to get a second option from someone you trust such as a GP?

It could be that you are blinkered to the issue due to being his dad, it could be he is just fine and the school isn’t being nuanced enough in their assesment but I don’t think any parent is in a good place to judge.

Hence why the school need to do the assesment in the first place.

Why BMI doesn’t work!

http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_05_09.html

Why BMI doesn’t work!

http://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/devlin_05_09.html

Well more like “Why BMI isn’t perfect”, which no one with any sense would say it was. It’s a blunt tool to do a simple screening. That’s all it ever was and all it ever will be. Quite why people still insist on concluding that if ia test isn’t perfect then it is useless is beyond me.

Did the letter actually say that? Poor.

If you’re confident about his diet and weight, and he is too, bin the letter and think no more about it.

BMI is a very crude measurement in children. Perhaps, as said above, the start of a conversation, but not a lot more.

Thanks for the replies – I’m not that bothered about it to be honest I just find in intriguing that it’s such a poor assessment.

Anyway MiniG has just played football for this school (central mid-field they won 7-0) and has gone to his Pro-Direct football training (it’s pretty unusual to play/train twice).

The parents I was talking to on the sidelines had a good laugh about it.

i am 12st 8lbs and 5ft 10 and just over weight apparantly. i could lose 11 kilos and only be in the middle of ‘normal’!!

Yep, sounds about right to me.

I’ve just managed to work my up to the boundary for ‘Over weight’, after a year of concerted weights training…..

As above, and on the previous thread on this, BMI’s a relatively blunt instrument but it is broadly accurate for most people.

Kids are a difficult one, because it’d need to factor in where they are in respect to puberty hitting, as well as their height.

If you’re genuinely convinced that there’s no issue, bin the letter. Otherwise, it is something that needs to be handled sensitively and carefully.

I’ve just managed to work my up to the boundary for ‘Over weight’, after a year of concerted weights training…..

I’d have to add 2 stone to hit overweight according to BMI. An extra 2 stone of muscle would require a huge undertaking, so if I ever hit the overweight band it’ll almost certainly be because I’ve eaten all the pies.

🙁 (looks at Chart and starts thinking of putting up a wanted add for norovirus)

5’10” and 100kg here , according to BMI charts that makes me obese! I’m not suggeting that dropping some weight wouldn’t be a good idea for me but anything more than 10kg would see me starting to look a bit gaunt. I can still(just)get into size 32″ pants and have a 46″ chest.
If I were the OP I wouldn’t be worried , you say your lad is active so that can only help with his overall health.

I’m not overweight, I just have an unusually high number of Higgs Bosons.

But try explaining that to a BMI chart…

BMI based on simple height weight ratio isn’t (can’t possibly be) an accurate measure of fat percentage (hence obesity). That’s why you need quite sophisticated kit for measuring it properly.

Example. When I was a fit young rock climber I weighed 1.5 stone more that I do now. Did I have a higher percentage of body fat? No – it was muscle. Now as a wizened old man because my muscle mass has reduced my percentage fat must be higher. But simplistic BMI measurements put me lower down the chart.

My sister in law is a district nurse & despairs at the way the local schools bash this dross out.
Her take on it is you know who the chubbers are from their general attitude to food/exercise.
She had a letter from the school saying they were worried her youngest was underweight. Thing is she eats for Britain in a not fussy way, only she loves running, distance events + she’s got into climbing in the last year.
I know there are possible pointers to kids with eating problems but this broad brush approach will only create issues that don’t exist IMO.

didn’t we do this last week?

I thought last weeks was rather more amusing (particularly those people who thought I really had got a letter telling me my little boy was too short), but then I would say that 😉

Sort of along the same lines, a couple of decades ago (honestly) we received a letter telling us that Son No1’s head was too large. Massive panic- but ffs, what could we do? How can you shrink your boy’s head in a non-invasive way even if we wanted to or even needed to? We were first-time parents and had loads of sleepless worried nights but we rode it out and didn’t overly worry. Actually we worried a lot, letters like that make you worry a lot.

He graduated a few months ago with a 2.1 from Cardiff in Sound Technology.

This is who he works with nowadays, aged 21.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6LTDsPMDLY

Experts work to the best of their knowledge and the best of their ability withing a huge variety of constraints. They do their best but can and do get it wrong. Or maybe we do. We worried that Son 1 would struggle, based upon our interpretation of the information received re: head size. The world revolves around ‘averages’, ‘the mean value’ and ‘norms’. We are all individuals and we come in a huge variety of shapes, sizes and abilities.

Seems pretty as accurate for me…as I nudge into overweight I start to get a bit of an extra chin :). I don’t ‘diet’, just eating a bit more carefully and sitting at 5’10” and 72kg at the moment.

And despite the OP being about a child – 90% of the discussion about BMI here is about adults, with the usual, often entirely fair criticisms of it being a blunt instrument. Criticisms I hear, btw, almost weekly from people with Diabetes, a BMI of > 35, and serious cake/crisp habits… and myself with BMI 28 😳

At age 10 the normal BMI range is about 14-20. We have some of the chubbiest kids in Europe. Do we want the School Nurses to ignore this?

In the OPs case, there may be very good reasons for this, and kids grow in different ways. Often chub up a bit, then stretch out at puberty. Yep, the assessment should be a bit more sophisticated, but it really is just feeding info back to parents.

I’m not overweight, I just have an unusually high number of Higgs Bosons.

I’m full of dark matter.

I’m full of dark matter.

Yep, the assessment should be a bit more sophisticated, but it really is just feeding info back to parents.

Not sure the focus should be as much on the BMI as an inappropriate instrument as the business style “For Your Information” letter sent out on mass. It’s creeping in as the school-parent relationship becomes more of a businesslike one. At least from the schools’ side.

I’ve not had one of these letters so I haven’t seen the wording, but the whole thing looks like one giant arriss covering exercise: by passing on the information they hope to pass on any responsibility. I’m not saying schools are responsible for weight issues in children, but if in the future an issue develops then they’ve got the come back that they told you earlier. In this case it’s the blunter the instrument (bmi), the more “coverage” they get so vagueness works in their favour.
These business style FYI letters tend to rely on people laughing it off/ being a bit miffed and then “doing nothing”, or at least having no written record of doing anything. Future record will show that the bmi information became available, and the school/business acted on it and informed you. Maybe a business like response would be in order.
Reply, expressing your concerns about the quality of the school meals – you know he eats healthily at home so there must be an issue in school to investigate. Also query activity levels and quality during school time – he’s putting in the extra curricular activity but they still classify him as overweight, there must be an issue during school hours. And the psychological issues when this becomes playground banter ‘cos other parents told their little one that they’re “normal” .
If they want to cover such an individual subject as your boy’s weight with such a mass-mailing, cover-all letter as this, make them address it appropriately at an individual, personal level.
They started it, they called your boy fat 😉