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Weighing kids in school
Fidgetbrain
Posts: 188 Member
in Debate Club
What do you guys think about it, helpful in combatting obesity or just breeding insecurity in children?
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Replies
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Well, it's NOT a prerequisite to be a certain weight at school or to take a class just as it is for most jobs that adults don't need to meet a certain weight criteria either.
Kids know if they are fat. What we NEED to teach them is better behavior on food control and how it really affects them.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
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I vote for breeding insecurity. Occupying a growing and changing body is tough enough at times without having another metric thrown at you.
Agree with ninerbuff, kids know if they're fat. They've probably heard it already, and not kindly. Most of them aren't in charge of their own meal planning and sometimes economic circumstances force less nutritious, higher calorie choices.
Then we'll have the ones on the cusp of disordered eating who get nudged over the edge.9 -
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I'm on the fence with this one. I think that education about being in a healthy weight range and the risks of being above or below that range is lacking. I don't doubt that many kids would have jumped on the scales at home, but they probably don't have a reference point for what that scale number means. I also think that you can't judge a child's weight based on what they look like, and I'm not sure that it's a school's responsibility to do that anyway.
I see some comments above about kids knowing if they're fat, being bullied about it etc. but let's not forget that there are many children who BELIEVE they are fat, when they're actually in a healthy weight range (or sometimes even underweight). There are, I think, many children who would benefit from being able to see where they sit on a chart of healthy vs. non-healthy weight range for their age and height. It's not about the number on the scale, so much, but about how they are tracking vs. how they believe they are tracking.
In saying that, if it is done at school (or at all), it should be on a confidential basis - i.e. not lining all the kids up to be weighed in publicly! And it should be done along with an assessment of healthy behaviours - how many serves of fruit & veg do you eat each day, how often do you play sports/be active, can you identify the emotions you're feeling in the moment, how do you feel about your body etc. - with a view to provide the child with an "action plan" of sorts for how they can improve their health. Let's face it, there are many parents who are not equipped to provide this information to their child (either through lack of education themselves, or lack of care, or thinking things are ok when they're not, or a multitude of other reasons), and if it can benefit the child and set them up with healthy habits for the rest of their life, I think it should be considered.9 -
I would need to understand the context it’s being done in. Like most things I don’t think this is a black abs white issue. Are we talking about it being part of an overall health screen like vision, hearing, and sports physicals are done at the school but by healthcare professionals , and results are only shared with the parents? Is it part of a comprehensive PE and Health Education in which kids are taught about how weight relates to health, and their weight is kept confidential to them. In both of these cases, I would be 100% ok with it.
Is the child’s weight publicly shared? Is it taken without parents knowledge? Is it taken with absolutely no context for how it relates to education? In these instances I would have concerns that I would want to get addressed with the School before having my child participate.8 -
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Fidgetbrain wrote: »What do you guys think about it, helpful in combatting obesity or just breeding insecurity in children?
Sounds ridiculous and a waste of time. I'm sure most school boards have better things to spend their limited time and money resources on then weighing kids. What would even be the point? My experience is that public schools (in Canada at least) already overstep the school/home boundary and it is irrelevant and none of their business what my kid weighs.4 -
Fidgetbrain wrote: »Yup agree with you both, I was super insecure about my weight at school cause I was a foot taller than the other girls in my class and obvs weighed a lot more even though I was still healthy. You can see if a child is obese without focusing on numbers and IMO it just leads to comparison. Health, nutrition and PE are far more useful than just gathering data and telling kids/their parents that they’re fat
Same. Although I was a tall scrawny beanpole despite eating like the proverbial horse, because clearly I was expending all my calories attaining height rather than fat.
This brought back a memory of doing some kind of fitness testing in gym class, probably 7th or 8th grade. I wasn't a sporty kid or an active kid (I was super clumsy... still am) so I failed miserably, and publicly. I remember one of the tests was a chin-up and just hanging there, unable to lift myself a millimetre. It certainly didn't motivate me to become more active and I never took phys ed classes after they became elective. In fact, it took me almost 40 years to develop an interest in any kind of structured exercise, in part because I always felt I wouldn't do it "right".4 -
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I disagree with the premise that children, and crucially their parents know they are fat (or overweight, or healthy weight or under weight). Some will, many will not really be clued up at all.
When I was growing up "fat kids" probably did as they were in a very small minority - not the case now where I live sadly. I find it terribly sad to see so many children growing up badly overweight and often also with a lack of movement in their lives.
Parents also seem to come up with a load of reasons to ignore what can be setting up unhealthy patterns for life - "it's just puppy fat", "they will grow out of it".
(Unless their children are eating puppies no it's not puppy fat and they may grow out of it or they might grow into being fat teenagers and then fat adults.)
Fat parents with fat kids may need a dose of reality about their child's health and their own parenting skills.
Weight has a massive influence on health and letting the children's parents know gives them the chance to take action if required. Health is a part of education and weight is part of health.9 -
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Fidgetbrain wrote: »I disagree with the premise that children, and crucially their parents know they are fat (or overweight, or healthy weight or under weight). Some will, many will not really be clued up at all.
When I was growing up "fat kids" probably did as they were in a very small minority - not the case now where I live sadly. I find it terribly sad to see so many children growing up badly overweight and often also with a lack of movement in their lives.
Parents also seem to come up with a load of reasons to ignore what can be setting up unhealthy patterns for life - "it's just puppy fat", "they will grow out of it".
(Unless their children are eating puppies no it's not puppy fat and they may grow out of it or they might grow into being fat teenagers and then fat adults.)
Fat parents with fat kids may need a dose of reality about their child's health and their own parenting skills.
Weight has a massive influence on health and letting the children's parents know gives them the chance to take action if required. Health is a part of education and weight is part of health.
That’s kinda why I don’t think it will work, parents of the kids who actually have a problem won’t change their habits so now the child is fat and humiliated instead of just fat.
Also not really related to your comment but “The United Kingdom's National Obesity Forum… is recommending that its National Child Measurement Programme be expanded to have 4- to 5-year-old and 10- to 11-year-old children weighed when they return to the classroom — and then weighed again in the spring — in a bid to tackle COVID-related gains.” [ https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/936130 ] This is problematic to me, are children not meant to be growing at this age? Stigmatising weight gain at a time when a normal healthy child should be gaining doesn’t seem like a great approach. As a child, if you weighed me at say 10 years old, then 11 and told me my bmi had increased — even if both were in the healthy range, I would feel *kitten* about myself and try to get back down to my 10 year old weight 😕. Hell I spent most of secondary school wondering why I couldn’t weigh the same as I did at 12 since I was the same height even though my body wasn’t fully developed then.
No of course not all parents will take action but maybe some will. There's good, bad and mediocre parenting in all aspects of bringing up children. There isn't one solution that will "work" but maybe many solutions that might work for some and not for others?
I don't equate parents knowing their child's weight and whether it is problematic equals "humiliated" or "stigmatised" - I'm pretty sure they don't point out the fat kids at the next days' assembly or shame the parents at the school gate.
The weight measurements pre and post COVID aren't going to ignore that the children are expected to be growing when they are a year older. BMI is a height/weight ratio - if a child has grown taller and heavier proportionally between measurements their BMI hasn't increased.
Not all children have such emotional reactions to their weight as you seem to have done, I could see that giving the option to opt out of testing could be beneficial for some.8 -
Fidgetbrain wrote: »What do you guys think about it, helpful in combatting obesity or just breeding insecurity in children?
IMO, that's what annual checkups with the children's Dr. is for.8 -
I distinctly remember being lined up in elementary school 2nd - 7th grades for the school nurse to check everyone in class for height and weight, picked with a comb to check for lice and made to bend over to check for scoliosis. The nurse would call out the information out loud and have the teacher record it.
So I annually suffered the humiliation of having my weight called out in front of all of my classmates AND being made to bend over and touch my toes--making my belly fat turn into numerous blobby rolls.
I'm all for public health checks, but PRIVATE SCREENINGS PLEASE!!!!8 -
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@cwolfman13 and @rosebarnalice hit the nail on the head. But I would put it in stronger terms:
Any discussions of a person's health (including especially a child) should be done in private and with great compassion and support. A minor child should have a parent present for any medical visit (this is probably the law in the US, although it may be skirted in some instances, unfortunately). Weighing students en-mass and in front of each other could be a life-changing traumatic event-- and not in a good way.
In the US, we have a stated right to medical privacy, and breaking that privacy is illegal. Yes, severely overweight kids know they are so, and have been teased and taunted about it many times. They obviously would change the situation themselves if they could. The reasons they can't are quite complex.
Kids that are unusually tall, short, skinny, or have anything else out of the ordinary are in a similar situation.
Now, when a doctor speaks to a parent and child about that child being overweight, it can also be traumatizing. It should be done with an offer of compassionate treatment.5 -
Weighing children should be done at the doctor's offices as part of their annual exams. Nobody at school needs to have that done. Teach nutrition at school? Fine, great. Teach sports/healthy exercise/fitness, wonderful. But what purpose does it serve to weigh in at school; the schools should already have access to a child's medical records don't they?
Let me add my thoughts about schools and physical fitness as well.
How much benefit do children get in typical gym classes where most kids are standing around watching everybody else, or waiting their turn, etc.? Maybe they do it very differently these days. It'd be more useful if children moved during gym class. 
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Weighing children should be done at the doctor's offices as part of their annual exams. Nobody at school needs to have that done. Teach nutrition at school? Fine, great. Teach sports/healthy exercise/fitness, wonderful. But what purpose does it serve to weigh in at school; the schools should already have access to a child's medical records don't they?
Let me add my thoughts about schools and physical fitness as well. How much benefit do children get in typical gym classes where most kids are standing around watching everybody else, or waiting their turn, etc.? Maybe they do it very differently these days. It'd be more useful if children moved during gym class.
Probably depends on the school and district. My kids PE classes are pretty active. Soccer, volleyball, basketball, archery, biking, running/walking challenges, etc.1 -
Weighing children should be done at the doctor's offices as part of their annual exams. Nobody at school needs to have that done. Teach nutrition at school? Fine, great. Teach sports/healthy exercise/fitness, wonderful. But what purpose does it serve to weigh in at school; the schools should already have access to a child's medical records don't they?
Let me add my thoughts about schools and physical fitness as well. How much benefit do children get in typical gym classes where most kids are standing around watching everybody else, or waiting their turn, etc.? Maybe they do it very differently these days. It'd be more useful if children moved during gym class.
Must be a different system in your country.
No there aren't annual checkups scheduled at the Doctors for all school age children (doubt that would have happened during COVID-19 times anyway), no schools don't have access to children's medical records as that would be a data protection breach (they will be made aware of risk factors).
Health screening carried out at schools has been happening for generations although the checks have obviously evolved from what mostly have been around diseases of poverty for my parent's generation and the methods have become far more humane. Even the way my generation would have been treated is different to what would be acceptable today.
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I clearly remember having our body tested in our PE class--girls only--my sophomore year of high school. The student teacher used a body caliper and called out the measurements to the student who was keeping track of everyone's. I had actually lost some weight and was actually teetering on developing an eating disorder at the time and could hear that my numbers were lower than most others....but still, horrifying! I realize now how absolutely wrong that was, especially at an age when so many girls are self-conscious about their bodies anyway.
If schools were to weigh kids, it should be done in private. As it is now in our schools, kids need to turn in physicals at like kindergarten, 2nd and 6th grade, which usually includes their BMI. I think it should be up to the child's physician to inform parents that their child is in the overweight range. Having said that, I don't think there's any problem with schools having some curriculum to teach kids healthy habits--not just weight-related, but things like mental and social-emotional health as well. My kids actually have a class called "Healthy Minds" which alternates with their PE, which teaches them just that.
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Weighing children should be done at the doctor's offices as part of their annual exams. Nobody at school needs to have that done. Teach nutrition at school? Fine, great. Teach sports/healthy exercise/fitness, wonderful. But what purpose does it serve to weigh in at school; the schools should already have access to a child's medical records don't they?
Let me add my thoughts about schools and physical fitness as well. How much benefit do children get in typical gym classes where most kids are standing around watching everybody else, or waiting their turn, etc.? Maybe they do it very differently these days. It'd be more useful if children moved during gym class.
I know it was like that when I was in school (especially high school, which was just ridiculous). However, it seems like now at least at the elementary school level, my kids are actually quite active during their gym class. The play the regular movement games, but also stuff like Tabatas and push-ups--which my son bragged he was the only one who could do it correctly because he does them regularly in karate .
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Jthanmyfitnesspal wrote: »@cwolfman13 and @rosebarnalice hit the nail on the head. But I would put it in stronger terms:
Any discussions of a person's health (including especially a child) should be done in private and with great compassion and support. A minor child should have a parent present for any medical visit (this is probably the law in the US, although it may be skirted in some instances, unfortunately). Weighing students en-mass and in front of each other could be a life-changing traumatic event-- and not in a good way.
In the US, we have a stated right to medical privacy, and breaking that privacy is illegal. Yes, severely overweight kids know they are so, and have been teased and taunted about it many times. They obviously would change the situation themselves if they could. The reasons they can't are quite complex.
Kids that are unusually tall, short, skinny, or have anything else out of the ordinary are in a similar situation.
Now, when a doctor speaks to a parent and child about that child being overweight, it can also be traumatizing. It should be done with an offer of compassionate treatment.
If you're thinking that's what HIPAA says, that would be inaccurate. I mention this because a lot of people think HIPAA is some generalized right of privacy for medical information. It's not.
I'm unaware of other laws that guarantee medical privacy in some sort of generalized "no one can ask, no one can can tell" way . . . which doesn't mean there are none. (I'm fairly aware of what HIPAA covers, but not other medical records acts that may exist).
If anything, a student's weight, measured in an education institution setting for some related purpose, would be more likely to be considered private and not to be disclosednas non-directory information under FERPA, but that's not a medical privacy law, it's a student records law.5 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »Fidgetbrain wrote: »What do you guys think about it, helpful in combatting obesity or just breeding insecurity in children?
IMO, that's what annual checkups with the children's Dr. is for.
How many children (or adults for that matter) get annual check ups with a doctor?4 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Fidgetbrain wrote: »What do you guys think about it, helpful in combatting obesity or just breeding insecurity in children?
IMO, that's what annual checkups with the children's Dr. is for.
How many children (or adults for that matter) get annual check ups with a doctor?
I thought all of them do. Guess it depends what country you are in. I'm in Canada and my kids always went for annual checkups. Height and weight checks, vaccine updates, general health concerns.
Once they were old enough (like maybe 12-ish?) we did their usual consult, and then I left the room so that they could discuss/ask questions about anything privately with their doctor.2 -
Fidgetbrain wrote: »Yup agree with you both, I was super insecure about my weight at school cause I was a foot taller than the other girls in my class and obvs weighed a lot more even though I was still healthy. You can see if a child is obese without focusing on numbers and IMO it just leads to comparison. Health, nutrition and PE are far more useful than just gathering data and telling kids/their parents that they’re fat
Same. Although I was a tall scrawny beanpole despite eating like the proverbial horse, because clearly I was expending all my calories attaining height rather than fat.
This brought back a memory of doing some kind of fitness testing in gym class, probably 7th or 8th grade. I wasn't a sporty kid or an active kid (I was super clumsy... still am) so I failed miserably, and publicly. I remember one of the tests was a chin-up and just hanging there, unable to lift myself a millimetre. It certainly didn't motivate me to become more active and I never took phys ed classes after they became elective. In fact, it took me almost 40 years to develop an interest in any kind of structured exercise, in part because I always felt I wouldn't do it "right".
Same. I grew to almost my full adult height (5' 10") between grade 7-8 and was like 110 lbs. I remember those fitness tests you had to do, with the gold, silver and bronze. Also got pushed into joining the basketball team, because I was tall so I must be good right? Wrong. lol2 -
Everything I do with weight related issues with either adults or kids is in my approach. I don't like to tell people they are overweight unless I really have to. Rather my approach is always "how do you feel about your current physical stature?" And of course they are going to tell me how they view themselves. Then of course I just offer the help to help them get to their goal.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition 6 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Fidgetbrain wrote: »What do you guys think about it, helpful in combatting obesity or just breeding insecurity in children?
IMO, that's what annual checkups with the children's Dr. is for.
How many children (or adults for that matter) get annual check ups with a doctor?
My daughter (now 19) had a yearly appointment with her doc all the way thru high school. Of course, we have acceptable health insurance, so everything is covered for the yearly visit. She was also active in sports thru high school (soccer and archery) so she had to have physicals to compete.
As to the original question, I think regular screenings should be done - in private - for all children.1 -
Theoldguy1 wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Fidgetbrain wrote: »What do you guys think about it, helpful in combatting obesity or just breeding insecurity in children?
IMO, that's what annual checkups with the children's Dr. is for.
How many children (or adults for that matter) get annual check ups with a doctor?
I thought all of them do. Guess it depends what country you are in. I'm in Canada and my kids always went for annual checkups. Height and weight checks, vaccine updates, general health concerns.
Once they were old enough (like maybe 12-ish?) we did their usual consult, and then I left the room so that they could discuss/ask questions about anything privately with their doctor.
In theory, the US system of private health insurance and programs like CHIP (children's health insurance program) should result in children being able to see a doctor annually. Based on self-reported household data, it does seem like the US is doing pretty well at meeting that goal: https://wwwn.cdc.gov/NHISDataQueryTool/SHS_child/index.html
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