Should schools be saying this?

My 13 year old was given a physical yesterday at school and told that she must have too much internal fat because she weighs too much.

My daughter is anything but fat, she is in school skirts for a 10 year old as the 13 year old ones are far too big, she can fit into her 8 year old brother trousers and he's not even chubby, and I'm not deluded thinking my fat kids are slim. My daughter is always saying, is my chin too big? Is my nose a strange shape? Are my eyes to big? :roll: when she looks fine and now the school is telling her she's carrying too much fat when she is skinny if anything. Are not children going through their teenage years the most at risk from eating disorders, so telling her she's carrying too much fat is senseless. If they have concerns about children surely they should speak to the parents.

What's your thoughts?

Alison

I totally agree Alison, they shouldn't be saying ANYTHING relating to weight and body image in front of the children themselves. If schools have these kinds of concerns, they should invite the parents in for an informal chat.

If it was measured via BMI (body mass index) then fear not, at 85kg and 180cm I've been 'obese' since I left school nearly twenty years ago! BMI measurements are fundamentally flawed and should be scrapped in my humble opinion.

More importantly though, the school in question needs an urgent rethink about the consequences such a procedure may have on young impressionable minds.

ask them what they are doing to give her a decent physical education, a lot of schools are cutting back on this.

Internal fat? What a load of bollocks! They use a system the hasn't been updated since the 80's the uses baseline data gathered in the 1940's (when no one had eaten a proper meal for nearly a decade) to make a medical judgement like that? Utter rubbish. Dividing height by weight type BMI figures are about as scientific as reading tea leaves, or praying to the Sun.

Because of my lifting my mathematical BMI is 34, which makes me a bloaty lardo who's going to implode into a black hole any minute. However, the last proper medical I had which combined electrical resistance testing and skin fold calipers measurements put me at 12, a teensy difference.

Tell the school to get back to actually teaching stuff for a change and stop butting their misguided noses inaccurately into matters that are of zero concern to them. I mean, whatever next - will GPs start teaching English?

As Chopper says Bmi is a load of bollocks, if you apply the same logic any professional rugby player is morbidly obese!!

I think everyone is classed as obese these days?

When we had the school dentist round in the first few weeks of secondary school, the dentist opened my mouth and said "ooo havn't you got funny teeth"

I'll never forget that, possibly it's the reason I never smile. Although I guess she didn't realise that I'd tripped over a dodgy paving slab and landed with my mouth against a nail that was sticking out of the wall at just below head height....at school.

On the insulting children bit. In middle school I was short, skinny and ugly and had practically no friends, I once, to try and get some popularity, sent myself a Valentines card and when the teacher pulled it out she said to me and every one else "Who on earth would send you a Valentines card Alison" and everybody fell about with hysterics, I felt totally humiliated. New rule to oneself, never send oneself Valentines cards :facepalm:

Alison

Alison,

You should take this matter up with the head. There is no way anyone coming into the school is allowed to say such demeaning and insulting things to the children, and they ought not to be doing that job!
Especially if they are wrong! What the hell is "internal fat" anyway!

If there any issues which need to be discussed then a letter to parents would be the correct action. They crossed the line and need to be reported. You have to wonder what other things they have said to the kids?

Cheers,
Andrew
(Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, well not that far away)

+1. For my weight I should be 8ft 7!