Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So sad that parents are afraid to help their kids become healthier.

Use this BMI calculator... 5 feet and over 100 pounds is not good:
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/raising-fit-kids/weight/bmi/bmi-calculator

That chart is ridiculous & uses archaic, nonsensical standards.It compares the child's weight to that of other boys his age, not other boys who are both the same age & the same his height which, according to both logic & the various pediatricians & dieticians I know who were educated more recently (ie within the last decade or so) at top schools (&, due to both my own graduate field of study & profession & those of my DH, I know several), is a far more apt comparison.Unless he's very thin naturally,a healthy child who is much taller than the vast majority of his peers should weigh quite a bit more than they do!

According to the CDC growth chart, a boy who is 5 ft tall & weighs 100 lbs on his 10th birthday is in 97th percentile for height & the 94th percentile for weight. Sounds pretty proportional to me! The kid is TALL, not overweight!

This calculator is more accurate than others. You guys are forgetting that these are KIDS, not adults. It is OK for a petite 5-foot female to weight 100 pounds. It is not OK for a tall 10-year-old to weigh 100 pounds. Just because 1/3 of American kids are overweight does not make it something we should just accept. We should fight it (and by it, I really mean the food industry... JMHO).

I agree that we shouldn't just accept that 1/3 of kids are overweight.Being overweight comes with serious health risks. A child who is height & weight proportional, as is the PP's son, is not overweight, however.

And that calculator is definitely not more accurate than others as it labels all kids who are in or over the 85th percentile for weight as overweight, all who under the 5th percentile as underweight & all who are between the 5th & 85th percentile as being at a healthy weight, regardless of height. While age certainly is a factor in ideal weight, height is far more relevant. A child who is in the 10th percentile for height & the 80th percentile for weight is overweight while one who is in the 95th percentile for height & the 95th percentile for weight is not yet according to this chart, it's the opposite. Completely absurd.

+1

I was a late grower & , until I hit a growth spurt at 13-14, was always in the 3rd percentile for weight.I was also, however, in the 3rd percentile for height so I was never too skinny, just really short,yet this chart would have labelled me as dangerously underweight! Meanwhile, had I weighed what the average girl my age weighed, given how much shorter I was than the average girl my age, I would have been overweight, yet this chart would have labelled my weight as being in the healthy range.This makes zero sense!

I'm currently 5'4". Should I weigh the same as a healthy woman my age who is 5'11" or one who is 4'10"? Of course not! Then why should a boy who is several inches taller than most of his peers weigh the same as they do? He shouldn't!

You don't use the word "diet" as in weight loss.

What does his doctor say? That would be my first step. I was concerned with my ds's weight around that age. The doctor wasn't. As long as they are eating an overall healthy diet and staying active weight should even itself out. She said not to limit healthy foods. (Within reason of course) Eat leaner sources of protein a few times/week. Make sure he's eating well balanced meals so his body is getting what it needs.

The one thing she stressed was to limit pop and juice, drink more water and make sure the activity level stays up especially in the winter when a lot of people are inclined to be less active. She said he would hit a growth spurt and even things out, and he did that.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Weight threads are very predictable on DCUM. Many many people pile on an OP who is concerned about their overweight child and accuse her of being shallow and horrible and about to give their kid an eating disorder. There ARE healthy ways to talk to kids about good eating habits, and to help instill them. I would seriously love to know how many of these overwrought posters attacking OPs like this one are overweight themselves. I would guess the vast majority. Being overweight is a serious issue, and it is not bad parenting to address it - it just needs to be done carefully and sensitively. I think way too many people project their own defensiveness about their weight problems to OPs like this one.

I'm one of the "overwrought" LOs & I am definitely not overweight (I'm 5'3 & was 107 lbs at my last doctor's appointment).I'm just sensible enough to understand that it is normal for a child who is taller than about 95% of his peers to also be heavier than about 95% of his peers.

PPs not LOs lol. Damn auto correct!

Anonymous wrote:You don't talk about dieting, you talk about diet and health. And you enlist your pediatrician to help.

THIS!!!!

A person can eat healthy foods in ridiculous quantities. Then it is not healthy.

You owe it to your child to bring up issues, and this is one. You get professional help because it is so touchy. You work on this without letting it interfere with your relationship.

My child is in high school, and you can see in soccer (yes, travel) some of the boys who really should lose 10-15 lbs (or more). Their weight is holding them back. I bet they will look back and wish that someone had helped them improve their habits when the habits were forming.

My nephew went to an active camp to lose some weight - not a camp for the obese, but a camp for active boys who needed to make some diet changes. He is much happier, and a much better athlete (he cares about being an athlete, so this mattered a lot).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So sad that parents are afraid to help their kids become healthier.

Use this BMI calculator... 5 feet and over 100 pounds is not good:
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/raising-fit-kids/weight/bmi/bmi-calculator

That chart is ridiculous & uses archaic, nonsensical standards.It compares the child's weight to that of other boys his age, not other boys who are both the same age & the same his height which, according to both logic & the various pediatricians & dieticians I know who were educated more recently (ie within the last decade or so) at top schools (&, due to both my own graduate field of study & profession & those of my DH, I know several), is a far more apt comparison.Unless he's very thin naturally,a healthy child who is much taller than the vast majority of his peers should weigh quite a bit more than they do!

According to the CDC growth chart, a boy who is 5 ft tall & weighs 100 lbs on his 10th birthday is in 97th percentile for height & the 94th percentile for weight. Sounds pretty proportional to me! The kid is TALL, not overweight!

This calculator is more accurate than others. You guys are forgetting that these are KIDS, not adults. It is OK for a petite 5-foot female to weight 100 pounds. It is not OK for a tall 10-year-old to weigh 100 pounds. Just because 1/3 of American kids are overweight does not make it something we should just accept. We should fight it (and by it, I really mean the food industry... JMHO).

I agree that we shouldn't just accept that 1/3 of kids are overweight.Being overweight comes with serious health risks. A child who is height & weight proportional, as is the PP's son, is not overweight, however.

And that calculator is definitely not more accurate than others as it labels all kids who are in or over the 85th percentile for weight as overweight, all who under the 5th percentile as underweight & all who are between the 5th & 85th percentile as being at a healthy weight, regardless of height. While age certainly is a factor in ideal weight, height is far more relevant. A child who is in the 10th percentile for height & the 80th percentile for weight is overweight while one who is in the 95th percentile for height & the 95th percentile for weight is not yet according to this chart, it's the opposite. Completely absurd.

Anonymous wrote:Weight threads are very predictable on DCUM. Many many people pile on an OP who is concerned about their overweight child and accuse her of being shallow and horrible and about to give their kid an eating disorder. There ARE healthy ways to talk to kids about good eating habits, and to help instill them. I would seriously love to know how many of these overwrought posters attacking OPs like this one are overweight themselves. I would guess the vast majority. Being overweight is a serious issue, and it is not bad parenting to address it - it just needs to be done carefully and sensitively. I think way too many people project their own defensiveness about their weight problems to OPs like this one.

I'm one of the "overwrought" LOs & I am definitely not overweight (I'm 5'3 & was 107 lbs at my last doctor's appointment).I'm just sensible enough to understand that it is normal for a child who is taller than about 95% of his peers to also be heavier than about 95% of his peers.

Anonymous wrote:Weight threads are very predictable on DCUM. Many many people pile on an OP who is concerned about their overweight child and accuse her of being shallow and horrible and about to give their kid an eating disorder. There ARE healthy ways to talk to kids about good eating habits, and to help instill them. I would seriously love to know how many of these overwrought posters attacking OPs like this one are overweight themselves. I would guess the vast majority. Being overweight is a serious issue, and it is not bad parenting to address it - it just needs to be done carefully and sensitively. I think way too many people project their own defensiveness about their weight problems to OPs like this one.

I think you need to keep thinking this through and ask yourself why this might be. A few PPs have made it clear: their parents handled it badly and it made any problems they may have had worse. I am one of the "overwrought" PPs who was raised to consider my body normal and healthy, except for one summer when I came home from college overweight and my mom started giving me crap. It was so unexpected, and so inappropriate. I made her stop, but it really made me see how different I would be if she'd done that to me every day as a kid, as so many moms do.

Everyone should read Ellyn Sattler to try and improve on this front. Everyone.

There are two of us on here discussing our 100 lb 10 yr olds. Mine is the DD who is fine at that weight (according to her pediatrician, not just a deluded mother) but it is possible that the other mom is accurate in seeing her son's weight as a problem, given that she noted he's put on weight recently and medical professionals have flagged it as a potential issue. This doesn't mean "put him on a diet" but it is a call to examine the whole family's eating and activity patterns without singling out the child. 100 lbs can be different on different kids since everyone is different and frame size and muscle mass has a big impact on how 100lbs looks on a person.

My DD has always grown consistently at the 97th percentile but is actually starting to come down off that curve in weight (100 lbs at 10 is below 97th percentile while her height is still 97th). Only one time over the years did her weight fluctuate above her growth curve. The pediatrician noted it as something to keep an eye on and so we examined what might have changed and I discovered that in the months prior when DH took over packing lunches (I changed jobs and started going to work early in the a.m.) he was packing her a big bagel with cream cheese every day! We stopped that, added more healthy protein and fruit, and by the next appt she was back to her usual curve.

To the PP who said 100lbs at 5 ft is fine for an adult but not a kid, that's ridiculous. A kid is still growing! It's completely normal for preteens to put on weight before shooting up in height in their teens.

The main thing is to look at behaviors -- healthy diet, active lives, good relationship with food. I have two kids, my 97th percentile DD and a 50th percentile DS. Both have always grown consistently on those tracks. But I worry a lot more about my 50th percentile DS because he's the one with a big sweet tooth, always begging for soda, would play video games all day if we let him, doesn't like to play outside. We make him do it but it's a struggle. My larger DD, despite outweighing him by 20+ lbs, is the one who's not really interested in TV/video games, plays outside as much as she can, doesn't like soda or french fries, and can take two bites of a piece of cake and be done. We feed them the same diet but genetically, DS takes after my slim brother and DD looks like my tall, curvy (not fat!) MIL.

Seriously, please read "Your Child's Weight: Helping without Harming" by Ellyn Satter. It provides great info about healthy growth, establishing healthy eating behaviors, the dangers of restrictive feeding, and the importance of accepting the child you have and supporting them to achieve the healthy size they are genetically programmed to have (which may be larger than the average - and that really is OK).

Dear OP. Maybe I missed it in this thread, but what is a typical day of meals for your DC?

Anonymous wrote:Holy cow, I'm the PP with the 5ft tall 10yo and I can't believe you all think I'm a nut. I rounded down - his weight is somewhere between 100 and 115 but he only gets weighed at the peds and I was mostly trying to make the point for the PP who mentioned having a child of similar weight. Seriously, I'm not a food crazy person at all - I think I'm the last woman in Bethesda who still eats bread and my kids are probably the only ones at their MCPS school who get a cookie or two in the lunch box every day.

However, my 10yo IS overweight - not wildly, but clearly - and it would be bizarre and unhealthy if I didn't acknowledge that. The measures we've taken are probably insufficient if anything, precisely because we don't want to give him a complex. And also because we can pretty well count on the fact that he's going to grow a lot more in terms of height. Our ped's advice was not to worry about numbers on the scale; just ensure his diet is as healthy as possible and that he's getting lots of physical activity (which parents of older kids who aren't into sports will appreciate is actually not as easy as it was when they are little.)

Agree

At 12, my son was 5 foot and 110 pounds. The doctor said he was just right.

At 13, my son is 5 foot 3 and 123 pounds. Again, the doctor says he is just right.

While OPs son -- like all kids -- should learn more about nutrition, 5 feet and 100 pounds is not obese.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So sad that parents are afraid to help their kids become healthier.

Use this BMI calculator... 5 feet and over 100 pounds is not good:
http://www.webmd.com/parenting/raising-fit-kids/weight/bmi/bmi-calculator

That chart is ridiculous & uses archaic, nonsensical standards.It compares the child's weight to that of other boys his age, not other boys who are both the same age & the same his height which, according to both logic & the various pediatricians & dieticians I know who were educated more recently (ie within the last decade or so) at top schools (&, due to both my own graduate field of study & profession & those of my DH, I know several), is a far more apt comparison.Unless he's very thin naturally,a healthy child who is much taller than the vast majority of his peers should weigh quite a bit more than they do!

According to the CDC growth chart, a boy who is 5 ft tall & weighs 100 lbs on his 10th birthday is in 97th percentile for height & the 94th percentile for weight. Sounds pretty proportional to me! The kid is TALL, not overweight!

This calculator is more accurate than others. You guys are forgetting that these are KIDS, not adults. It is OK for a petite 5-foot female to weight 100 pounds. It is not OK for a tall 10-year-old to weigh 100 pounds. Just because 1/3 of American kids are overweight does not make it something we should just accept. We should fight it (and by it, I really mean the food industry... JMHO).

Weight threads are very predictable on DCUM. Many many people pile on an OP who is concerned about their overweight child and accuse her of being shallow and horrible and about to give their kid an eating disorder. There ARE healthy ways to talk to kids about good eating habits, and to help instill them. I would seriously love to know how many of these overwrought posters attacking OPs like this one are overweight themselves. I would guess the vast majority. Being overweight is a serious issue, and it is not bad parenting to address it - it just needs to be done carefully and sensitively. I think way too many people project their own defensiveness about their weight problems to OPs like this one.

Anonymous wrote:Why are you guys saying that a 100-lb 10-year-old is A-OK? It is not. Kudos to PP for trying to help her son. It is ridiculous to not help your overweight child.

The child is over five feet tall. My DS wasn't that tall until he was 13.