An E for Effort
When I first saw the headline "In Obesity Fight, Many Fear a Note From School" and skimmed the article, I thought they were suggesting that they were receiving grades based on how fat they were or weren't. It's not, but still. I'm not sure if I'm glad that I grew up before this practice of listing a kid's BMI on their report cards or now when there are supposedly so many fat kids that administrators report that only the extremes are getting teased. As Mary said in the comments on the Too Fat To Adopt post, "I think it must be harder now to be the fat kid than ever before, and frankly, it was bad enough."
Honestly, this shouldn't be a shock to anyone. That was always my reaction when someone would look at me and say "You're fat." Nice news flash. And the sky is blue. The kid knows that they're overweight. The parents know the kid is overweight. The article opens with an anecdote of a six-year-old traumatized by the school's verdict and refusing to eat and while it was undoubtedly mentioned to make everyone worried about giving six-year-olds an eating disorder, it just reminds me of so many well-meaning adults who seemed to feel that if you just make someone feel bad enough about themselves, they'll choose to stop being fat. You know, I was only slightly overweight until I decided that since I was considered a fatso already, I might as well eat some junk food and at least enjoy myself.
I'm certainly not suggesting that we all stick our heads in the collective sand(wich) but man, is it appropriate for a school to make these kinds of distinctions? Especially when the same school is handing them a burger and french fries with a milk shake for lunch? Do you guys think this is going to help or harm those burgeoning relationships with food?
Honestly, this shouldn't be a shock to anyone. That was always my reaction when someone would look at me and say "You're fat." Nice news flash. And the sky is blue. The kid knows that they're overweight. The parents know the kid is overweight. The article opens with an anecdote of a six-year-old traumatized by the school's verdict and refusing to eat and while it was undoubtedly mentioned to make everyone worried about giving six-year-olds an eating disorder, it just reminds me of so many well-meaning adults who seemed to feel that if you just make someone feel bad enough about themselves, they'll choose to stop being fat. You know, I was only slightly overweight until I decided that since I was considered a fatso already, I might as well eat some junk food and at least enjoy myself.
I'm certainly not suggesting that we all stick our heads in the collective sand(wich) but man, is it appropriate for a school to make these kinds of distinctions? Especially when the same school is handing them a burger and french fries with a milk shake for lunch? Do you guys think this is going to help or harm those burgeoning relationships with food?
posted by Weetabix at 1:45 PM
9 Comments:
You know, I think there probably are some parents that don't get it, or just totally aren't paying attention, but I also think those are the same parents that either aren't going to appreciate the school's efforts to point out that there might be an issue...or that will totally mishandle it and make things worse for the kid. The parents that "get it" and can sensitively address eating issues and encourage their kids to be active? They probably aren't the ones getting these notes from the school.
There is so much wrong with this.
Mass weigh ins at school and BMI scores as part of your dreaded "permanent record"? As much as we laugh about it or blow it off our school days now, kids really take that stuff seriously. Think about whether or not this is how you'd like to be treated now that you are an adult. (Want your BMI on your college transcrips or your next performance evaluation? Want to have to include it on your resume?) If not, why not? If not, then why would you treat a child this way?
Do we really need another means by which to convince children that they're less than adequate?
Before we start chastising children for being overweight, let's get unhealthy foods out of the schools, bring back PE, and offer education to children and parents about healthy eating habits and exercise. Let's work on making our cities, parks, and neighborhoods safe for children to play/exercise. Let's stop marketing/advertising junk foods to children. Let's make healthy, nutritional food available to even the most financially strapped families.
Let's NOT put the responsibility for the problem of childhood obesity solely on the shoulders of children.
"The district’s cafeterias recently introduced kiwi and field greens, which drew enthusiastic reviews, but because of the high cost, they are now back to canned fruit and iceberg lettuce."
What the hell ever happened to the middle ground, romaine lettuce and apples, oranges, bananas? Why the Hell are they selling funnel cakes at all?
"The school district has revamped its menus, eliminating Gatorade and the powdered sugar from the funnel cakes. But it still sends a nutritionally mixed message: birthday cupcakes are discouraged while cafeterias sell ice cream sandwiches and Rice Krispie treats, which some students buy five at a time."
It's the "nutritionally mixed message" that bugs me.
As for the Percentile info: Yes, it should come with reading material, explaining what this means. Is it helpful at all? Maybe. I just pulled up a Kid's percentile calculator and figured out my percentile at 14 (86) and 16 (52). I think I felt fat at both weights, would the "reality check" of a hard number have made me happier? In the 86th percentila at 14, my mom knew I was "husky," but so is everyone in her family, so she would never have commented on it or tried to get me to dodge fate by dieting.
My niece is 10, and her doctor has talked to her mother about cuttign back on sweets and maintaining her weight. Not LOSING weight, because she's about to shoot up in height for goodness sakes, but just keep things on an even keel for a while.
Jen, that's a good point about scoliosis and whatnot. I guess I'm takin umbrage with the fact that it's being listed on a report card, already an emotion-filled event in itself. Essentially, the student's worth is represented there and they're including BMI in that measurement. The scoliosis measure is not being included on a report card, there's no checkmark for whether or not they have lice so why does the kid's BMI get placed there?
Tokyo Rosa, to your point, I think my favorite part of the linked article is this quote from Dr. David Ludwig: “It would be the height of irony if we successfully identified overweight kids through B.M.I. screening and notification while continuing to feed them atrocious quality meals and snacks, with limited if any opportunities for phys ed in school.”
I just had to comment on the "effort to make school food healthier by removing powdered sugar from funnel cakes". Um, yeah, like that's going to make any difference.
I agree with the previous posts about the "nutritionally mixed messages." I've been thinking that the recent attention on childhood obesity is missing the mark.
Fat kids are like canaries in a coalmine. For some reason (genetic, metabolic, etc.) some kids respond to a high-fat, high-sugar diet by getting fat. Yes, their obesity will affect their health. But other kids who eat the same diet but don't get fat will also have health problems as adults due to the unhealthy eating habits they learned as kids. I work near a middle school and at a food court where I eat lunch, I see the students (thin and fat) going to the joint that has the most enormous cups of soda. It looks like a half gallon! Given the recent post on this blog about coke, I can't help but thinking that *all* of those kids are going to suffer from it later.
Telling some kids they're fat and ignoring the other kids eating funnel-cakes is not going to solve the real problem!
I think it will hurt more than help. It's increasing the stigma, which doesn't seem to help with weight. Including a BMI on a report card seems really misguided. It's not a helpful context.
I can't help but think that it would have undermined the self esteem I gleaned from academic success if my BMI was also on my report card. I already felt bad enough about being a size 10 in high school. BMI is not a measure of progress or achievement. To the extent its a health concern, it should be dealt with as such--in confidence and with advice.
Aren't schools getting rid of recess and P.E.? I have been hearing that a lot lately in school(I am an Education major). If they really want to help obese kids they need to keep the recess and give kids more p.e.!
This kind of interference by schools is way out of line in my view. And I speak from experience. After a routine medical exam, my school sent a letter to my parents advising them that to put 11-year-old me on a medically-supervised diet. Despite a lifetime of dieting and rebound weight-gain themselves, my folks meekly complied, believing a diet would spare me the stigma of becoming a fat adult. In actual fact launching me on the path to self hatred ensured I became a fat adult.
It was 1970. BMI was unheard of and Macdonalds had yet to open a single branch in the UK. I was far from inactive, (PE and sport were daily activities at school; I swam 6 days a week through summer and rode a bike all year round), rarely ate junkfood, (which was also unavailable at school), and wasn't greatly overweight – I simply had a fat middle and it would be some years before I got boobs, hips or a defined waist. However, if my body was still very much in the process of maturing, my mind was ripe for screwing up. And that's exactly what happened.
My parents had already taught me that fat was shameful and socially undesirable. Now I learned it was a sin so heinous that outsiders had the right to intervene and issue punishment. (Think about it. What do parents do when you're bad? They deny you stuff you like - TV, pocket money, the company of dubious friends or, in this instance, food). Since the only difference between my eating habits and those of my friends was that theirs didn't appear to show, I learned to fixate on and despise my stomach. Childhood dieting effectively robbed me of the ability to eat intuitively and taught me to feel guilty around eating.
Much media fuss is made about children who so fear becoming or being perceived of as fat they put themselves on diets, often developing full blown eating disorders before they hit puberty. Yet advocating diets or sanctioning the use of bariatric surgery on children of the same age is viewed as perfectly acceptable. I'm sorry but the effect on young minds and bodies is damaging period.
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