A few weeks later we received a letter, telling us that our boy had a BMI in the 95th percentile. In other words he is classified as being overweight, bordering on the obese.
Luckily I have a set of eyes so can look at my lad and see that he is many things - funny, outgoing, cheeky - but obese he is not. I don't usually publish pictures of my kids, but to give you an idea of how far from being overweight he is I took one of his tummy over the summer holidays:
I'm not just a proud mother extolling the virtues of my offspring. He is stocky certainly, broad shouldered without a doubt. But obese? Not so much.
Anyway, I took the sensible view of sticking 2 fingers up to the letter blowing a big fat raspberry whilst doing so. I'm not worried about my child's weight. It is pretty perfect. Anyone with eyes in their head can see that.
What really irritated me was the lack of common sense being applied. What they have done is taken some measurements (possibly inaccurately, my experiences of health professionals being able to record weights is poor*) put them into a computer and the when computer says 'fat' they say fat. At no point has anyone looked at the children and gone 'they are not fat'.
My experience is not unusual. Chatting to a few other parents as we removed our active children from the top of the tree or pursued them in endless games of chase, there were quite a few children who came back with this label. Us parents looked at these apparently fat kids and decided that although there are clearly a number who do look larger than is probably healthy, there were also a substantial number who did not.
I was reminded of Disraeli's famous quote - "there are lies, damn lies and statistics". Next time I see a government stat bemoaning the numbers of obese 5 year olds, I'm going to look at my clearly not obese 5 year old and think 'you do all talk a lot of rot'. Next time I hear a government stat on anything that is clearly designed to be eyebrow lifting, I'm going to think 'bet you haven't applied much common sense to this stat either' and ignore it.
Clearly there are a number of things that the government stats are designed to highlight, trends in our lifestyle that need addressing. The problem is that if they can't use any common sense in recording the stats, the stats will be wrong. And when the stats are wrong it doesn't take long for us to stop believing them.
*including but not limited to the time the midwife decided I'd put on 15 kilos in a week, recorded it on my notes despite my protests and found that it led to all sorts of problems to me when in hospital having a baby - the false weight put me into the overweight category, which implied a lot of risk factors and led to a lot of unnecessary medication and a unneeded prolonged stay in hospital - all despite me constantly telling them that the figure they were using was wrong. Oooo I was cross!
I've had a similar experience where a health visitor marked E's weight as 7.6kg instead of 6.7kg on the growth chart which meant the next time I got him weighed and they put the right weight in they tried to tell me he was actually losing weight and needed to see a doctor urgently. You just want to scream 'look at him you stupid woman, he's fine!' Try not to let them wind you up but I know that's easier said than done. :)
ReplyDeleteArgh, yes, yes yes. Had similar with my 5yo.
ReplyDeleteSounds as if they definitely got the measurements wrong - you should query it.
ReplyDeleteI've been told that Littleboy 1 is underweight and the doctor was even talking about putting him on supplements to fatten him up! But if you look at him you can see that he is a fit, yes skinny, but very active sporty child with tons of energy. Definitely not unhealthy.
Ridiculous! I too know many people who have been shamed by the Govmt into thinking that they have 'fat' children. So not true and your son couldn't look more lean and healthy if he tried!
ReplyDeleteThat's awful about the midwife and your notes.
ReplyDeleteI have a different problem - my almost-5-year-old definitely is fat. He has love handles and a round tummy and he constantly asks for food. He has always been on the large side and extremely fond of eating (though simultaneously horribly fussy about what he eats). My younger son is quite skinny - it's not that we eat an unhealthy diet as a family. I was a large child myself and slimmed down in my mid teens, so to a certain extent I think it is just heredity, but it is a bit worrying. Given that we don't let him eat sweets or crisps except as a treat, it's quite hard to know when to allow and when to deny him food: if he's genuinely hungry I don't want him to be uncomfortable, and I also don't want to set up any long-term complexes about food or weight. Periodically he has a growth spurt and slims down proportionately, so I'm hoping that will happen soon and make me feel slightly better. Anyway, I don't need any letters from the school to tell me about this.
That's hilarious.
ReplyDeleteOur government agencies are also bloody useless. At a recent development check for my son, we were told he had motor impairment issues because he couldn't catch a tennis ball. To which I added, "maybe not, but he can eat food with chopsticks, build, take apart, and rebuild lego faster than I can get it out of the box."
I bet, if you dig, they've got a target... They've been asked to advise x% of children to lose weight, and teh fact that actually they've only found x-n number of children (actually that doesn't work if I'm talking in percentages, but you know what I mean) is not going to get in the way of them hitting their target.
ReplyDeleteSounds stupid? My GP (happens to be a friend) is getting ticked off because he's not diagnosing enough people with dementia. Someone's done a calculation and worked out that there *should* be however many people with dementia on his books. The only problem? There aren't. Which obviously means he must be missing some...
Oh, and on the weight front. If Luke's obese, so's George Clooney. Oh, he is... Apparently.
I think it's really hard to measure people - especially kids. We can all add an extra inch or two to our height by standing up straight. That must make a difference. Then there's the clothes on versus clothes off, shoes on versus shoes off issue with weighing. With kids, it must make a proportionally bigger difference. I think Plan B is right. There is an agenda here somewhere. I can sniff it.
ReplyDeleteI actually refused permission for my child to be weighed and measured at school for the ridiculous government system of stats and advice. She's not overweight, she eats reasonably healthy, she's tall for her age, and in the 95th centile for weight, but she's stockily build, like me, and my brother, and my mother's side of the family. I won't have her given a label at aged 5. She plays football, does ballet, swims, we walk everywhere because I don't drive. I don't need some silly system to tell me what size my kids are. When my son was 6 weeks old, and was in the 98th percentile for height and weight (and exclusively breastfed) I was told I'd need to "watch he didn't eat too much and get too big", which was also ridiculous. Maybe if the government actually concentrated on the families who do need nutrition/health advice instead of chuntering out silly statistics, they'd get somewhere.
ReplyDeletePhew, that was ranty! Sorry!
That's ridiculous! Whilst I think it is good that people are taking obesity in children seriously, the Government should be putting their efforts in to monitoring and controlling the food industry standards to make labelling more honest and to make healthy food options more affordable rather then doing studies like this that clearly give poor, inacurate results!
ReplyDeleteCat - it really is easier said than done. Especially when the person you are talking to appears to have lost leave of their own common sense! Grrrr!
ReplyDeleteJulie - Arggh. It isn't an unusual experience. Which makes me doubt the stats even more. Arrgggh
NVG - I would if I could be bothered. And I do wish people would use their eyes before looking at the charts and consigning children to a category. Winds me up no end!
Suzanne - There are a lot of children around who are fatter then they should be. But I do wish they could use some common sense before classifying them. I might believe some of their other stats then.
KenandDot - I was proper cross. And exactly, we have eyes in our heads, we can see for ourselves.
Wally - good answer!
ReplyDeleteplanB - probably. George? Obese? Really? I'll take obese any time!
Iota - I can sniff it too.
Karen - Love a good rant. Luke's actually come down the percentiles - he used to be the kid at the top at the 100%. But he was also quite a bit chubbier then too - good growth spurt and not an oz of fat to be found.
workingberlinmum - I get that they need accurate stats - especially to lean on the food industry or to change the standards. But their stats aren't accurate, and it doesn't take einstein to see that - which means no one will take any notice of them.
Brilliant. I think it's really hard to measure people - especially kids. We can all add an extra inch or two to our height by standing up straight. That must make a difference. Heparin here
ReplyDelete