Thursday, 16 August 2012
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What's your child's percentile?
Reading through the new issue of Parents magazine, I ran across an article about fighting weight in children. It discussed, of course, the hard struggle it is to keep kids within a reasonable weight with the hectic lives we lead now and that many parents of overweight kids don't realize their child has an issue. It also enlisted a help aid to figure where your child rates as far as their BMI goes. Go to http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/dnpabmi/ to find out if your child is within the healthy range, below or above.Check it out! There are so many reasons to keep in check with your child's weight and eating habits, even if you are busy. It can lead to diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and more as adults. Your child could even have high cholesterol right now, not to mention that obesity can cause a lot of upset for them emotionally. I won't rehash the article but if you find that your child's weight is within the upper percentile, give it a read. It could change your child's life and yours.
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Have you or your doctor used charts like this to help monitor your child's health and wellness? Do you think measuring childhood BMI is helpful?
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- From: Kuai_le1010@xanga
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Comments (47)
i think bmi charts are a waste of time to be honest. they're inaccurate. i've seen many times a mom upset because her daughter was considered obese by the bmi scale yet her daughter wasn't anywhere close to obese!
as for percentiles, my son is in the 75th-90th for height and 50th for weight.my daughter is in the (i think) 25th for height 10-20th for weight. their doctor has never said one negative thing about their weights. i, myself, was concerned over my daughter being so small but he said since i'm petite then she's likely following my footsteps...it's OK.parents read way too much into bmi charts. doctors too. don't let your child eat junk all the time and let them run off what they do eat! not hard!
@grizzlybearr@xanga - thank you!! My own Dr says BMI charts are out dated and unreliable.
@LadyGwenivere@xanga - I would check this one out. It is an updated Center for Disease Control and Prevention tool.
@grizzlybearr@xanga - Do you know what is used to calculate the BMI? Go check out the tool and then decide for yourself.
@Kuai_le1010@xanga - according to http://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/english_bmi_calculator/bmi_calculator.html
it only uses your height and weight.that in itself makes your actual bmi inaccurate.
@Kuai_le1010@xanga - also i see you left another comment and deleted it. please go ahead and say whatever you were going to say.
@grizzlybearr@xanga - That's for the adults. The children's/teen's considers date of birth, date of measurement, sex, height to the nearest 1/8th inch, weight to the nearest 1/4 pound.
@Kuai_le1010@xanga - the BMI does not take body structure, muscle mass, and bone density into account. According to it I "should" weigh 165lbs. which is bloody ridiculous. My family dr has told me it would be unhealthy for me to go below 185lbs (He does not want to see me under 190 but we settled on the other) . If I did I would lose muscle mass and probably encounter bone issues when Im older.
I dont believe much of what comes out of the CDC.
I will skip my bias about BMI as it relates to adults (which I think is total JUNK) and get to my issue with it for children and why this is dangerous.
It is impossible for a chart to take into consideration a child's growth future. You can neither quantify that nor predict it.
Giving a child the label of obese is damaging psychologically and socially, to say nothing of the the damage it does to your financial future (pre-existing conditions and how it relates to medical insurance). It also probably scares the parents half to death and then what is likely to occur is a tidal wave reaction of fear and "OMG Sammy needs to be on a diet, peas and carrots only, pronto!"
I think this is dangerous and that common sense should prevail when it comes to management of a child's weight and health. Charts absolutely do not play a role in this - it simply makes an overworked, busy doctor's life a hell of a lot neater and less liable.
@grizzlybearr@xanga - I don't want to get in a disagreement about the means of taking charge of your children's weight. I'd prefer we encourage people to be proactive about their children's habits since obesity has become a serious epidemic. I'd rather parents err on the side of caution and be aware if their child is headed down an unhealthy path. The article itself talks about choosing to feed your children healthy foods and making sure they get lots of exercise which is all this post is meant to do..not become a fight about the means you choose to check your child's weight.
I said all that but not as diplomatically and I didn't want the message to be lost, so I deleted it.
@sarahsmurfette@xanga - Read the article and you will see that it specifically states not to talk about your child to them in those terms. Having a healthy child is of the up most importance though
@LadyGwenivere@xanga - That's fine. You don't have to believe that the BMI calculator works or not. It is simply a tool that you can choose to use at your own discretion. I don't want the importance of a child's health to be undermined simply because a tool was listed that some disapprove of.
@Kuai_le1010@xanga - Do you think that children will not hear the doctor if this is done in a physician's office? And how does defining a child on a weight and height chart ensure their health and well-being? Doesn't it simply give you peace of mind?
At any rate, what about the rest of my comment?
My husband's family is super tall. His younger brother is around 6'4". But when he was in middle school, he was husky. He had to shop in the husky (fat boy) section. Why? Because his body was growing out before it grew up. He wasn't eating junk. He wasn't inactive. It was the way his body was preparing for growth.
And that is a perfect example of why these charts cannot predict and quantify a child's "obesity" and future health risk. My brother in law is a bean-pole, by the way.
@sarahsmurfette@xanga - ha ha ha, so I suppose if your child is severely overweight and there is serious concern about their health, it would be worse to have the doctor mention it in front of them than to care of the problem? Besides, I am sure that any good pediatrician would talk in terms that will not hurt your child's feelings, at least I would hope so.
Being informed about a child's weight has nothing to do with the parent and everything to do with the child's well-being, hopefully. If your child does poorly in school and you are concerned about it, is it about you as the parent wanting your kid to get straight A's or about your child's performance? I suppose the only answer is that it depends on the individual parents and their motives.
Whether you choose to believe the BMI or not is up to you, it was simply provided as a tool to use, if you wanted to. The point of the post is to promote healthiness and be proactive when it comes to your child's well being.
It seems a little over the top to say that parents will put their child on a peas and carrots only diet. I think most will up the ante when it comes to exercise and lower the amount of junk food they are given, especially if they talk to their pediatrician to start a get-healthy plan.
@sarahsmurfette@xanga - I think many kids go through a little bit of a chubby stage. Usually kids grow out and then up. Most people know that and can see their children go through the stages. This is not really about that though. The article is about serious weight gain that is not simply a stage. I don't want to argue about encouraging and promoting healthiness.
Wow, just because you mentioned BMI, everyone is apparently ignoring everything else in the article. That is a shame.
@snarkius@xanga - Well, for me, the title led me to believe it was a major part of the message.
@snarkius@xanga - I'm glad you read before you judged
I'm trying to get there to what you feel so passionately.
What sparked this, it couldn't have just been an article. Is there someone you thought of, a story that would help me to relate, then?
Maybe i'm having a hard time because I can't get past my bias of having had doctors use charts against me with my oldest daughter when she was a newborn.
I've tried and re-tried to read that article, and yes it does focus on BMI and chart definitions. I just can't eek myself past that issue to get anything else past it. I'm trying.
@sarahsmurfette@xanga - How did they use them against you? I'm not defending, I'd like to hear your experience/
@Kuai_le1010@xanga - My daughter's pediatrician wanted strict adherence to the chart of newborn growth. When she was born (by cesarean after failed induction at nearly 42 weeks), she weighed 7lb 14oz. In the first few days of her life, she lost about 10oz. It took almost 2 weeks to gain it back. Because of that, the pediatrician wanted her to gain 1lb per week to catch up to what the chart said her weight should be at her 1 month check up. This was despite all normal labs and testing (some extra bloodwork was also done because of him).
*He made us come in for weight checks twice a week.*He told me not to breastfeed, that she had to have formula to gain weight fast enough.*He forced me to breastfeed her in front of him and his staff to prove that we knew how and that the milk was in production.*He threatened to label her "failure to thrive" and to report us to child protective services because we breastfed and because she wasn't gaining a pound per week to catch up to the recommended weight as per the chart.
He refused to take into consideration the fact that she is just small, like I am. I am 5'1. When I delivered my daughter, at my very highest weight I was 119 (I gained 20 lbs during the pregnancy). I do not gain weight easily. She shares my genes. I'm serious when I tell you that through my young adult years I used a personal trainer to gain weight, and that's the first time I ever actually hit 100lbs, through hardcore weightlifting.
These charts can be dangerous. After the humiliation and degradation of being forced to breastfeed in front of him and his staff to prove that I had milk, I left that practice. Her pediatrician after that was not at all concerned about my daughter's weight, because she was otherwise healthy, and she was gaining - not losing - it was simply not rapid enough for the other dr's chart. She finally caught up when she was 3 years old.
I can't help but feel personally biased.
@grizzlybearr@xanga - The BMI is sooo off! Apparently 120 pounds for me (5'8, medium to big sized and bigger than average muscle mass for a girl) is still in a healthy range. To me, if I go below 140 I am too skinny. Chairs bruies my backbone and it's very uncomfortable :/ So I do not believe in it.
@sarahsmurfette@xanga - its almost comforting to know i am not the only one who has had this issue with Drs... our ason was diagnosed as "failure to thrive" (though in his case he actually was when he came to us) and it did not come off his file until he was 3 yrs old.. Im glad our family dr doesn't take any stock in what a bmi says.. he asked what his birthmum was like and i said she was petite and small framed, and his response was that he will always register on the lower end of the chart, but that does not mean he is unhealthy. We had to keep him on formula and then toddler supplements until he was almost 2 and half. It was so frustrating.
@snarkius@xanga - i read the whole article, and it seems that the bmi was the whole focus.. she didn't really "discuss" anything other then saying how it should be used to see if your child is healthy. I very strongly disagreed.
@Kuai_le1010@xanga - I would never undermind the importance of a child's health. But after doing the bmi charts for both my kids, I disagree with it even more. Its inaccurate, outdated and should not be used to gage the health of a child. The BMI does not take into account bone structure/density or muscle mass. I worry that parents are going to obsess over getting their child in a specific percentile because the "BMI says my child must weigh this to be healthy" when its wrong! Use common sense!