Is BMI meaningless, especially for kids?
Mar 4, 2010 Kids, Weight Loss
I was quoted this morning in a piece on ABCNews.com about tracking kids’ health through the use of BMI. An adult’s BMI is calculated using height and weight, and that number puts you in the underweight, normal, overweight, or obese category. It doesn’t take into account muscle mass, cholesterol, blood pressure, sugar levels, activity levels, waist size, or any other indicator of health and fitness.
And when you start talking about BMI for kids, it gets more complicated, because a BMI that’s considered OK for a ten-year-old is obese for a seven-year-old. I don’t think using BMI to track kids’ health is a good idea at all. (However, unlike most of the commenters on the ABC piece, I don’t think trying to improve kids’ health is a commie-liberal-big brother idea either – those commenters get paranoid and nutty pretty fast.) [Please note: the comments link has been working on and off all day; the link is correct, it's a problem with ABCNews.com.] Whether a kid is healthy or not is complicated. My son was in the top 5% on the BMI charts for a seven-year-old when he was seven, which is what triggered the note home. The problem is that the kids’ charts compare kids by age. My son was towering over the other kids in his class, so the comparison was completely out of whack. The charts allow for the fact the older kids are supposed to have a higher BMI, but not for kids who are very tall for their age.
It’s just one of those things where a number or a label without information is useless. I knew the assessment was ridiculous, but had to actually look up the info and explain the BMI-by-age concept to The Ass to talk him down after he saw the letter. He’s not a stupid guy. He’s actually quite smart, smarter than me in many ways. But the government told him his son was obese and he took them at their word. That’s a problem on many levels.
What’s the answer? I have no clue. I’m lucky that I have one kid who chooses to eat like a health nut and another who is active enough that he burns off the huge amount of carbs that he consumes. If one of them had a health problem I would expect my doctor to talk to me about it. He’s got all of my kids’ information right there in front of him, and even more important, he’s got my kids right in front of him. Does he need the government’s guidance talking to me about my kids’ weights? I don’t think so, but if they’re going to tell him anything, I’d rather it be something useful, like whether or not my kids can run and play with their classmates and how they do on fitness tests. What their blood tests should look like. And yes, whether their measurements are in a safe range, based on many factors. Using one number to target kids will include kids who don’t need the intervention and exclude kids who actually need the help.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Public Speaking Advice from an 8-year-old
I can’t believe I’m up this late. I swore I was going to go to bed before ten, because I have to get up at five. I’m speaking on a panel tomorrow for an organization called the Advertising Women of New York, about how brands work with bloggers to get their messages out. So I should be in bed, because when I’m really tired I tend to say some really dumb shit. But Jake gave me some fantastic public speaking advice, so I wanted to write it down before going to bed.
While I was tucking him in I mentioned that I wouldn’t see him in the morning, since I’d have to leave before he woke up. He asked me why, and I told him I was speaking in front of a bunch of people about blogs (which made him roll his eyes – he always rolls his eyes when I mention blogging). He asked me if I was nervous, and I told him just a little. This was his advice:
1) Look for familiar faces in the audience, people who like you and will make you feel relaxed if you look at them.
2) If you can’t find any familiar faces, then imagine everyone in their underwear.
3) If imagining people in their underwear doesn’t work, then try not to pee your pants.
Awesome advice, all of it.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
I. Don’t. Bluff.
Nov 30, 2009 Kids
Have you ever had an evening go from blissfully pleasant to shitty in the space of about 90 seconds?
We were having a fantastic day. Jake doesn’t have Tae Kwon Do on Mondays so there’s no running around, no rushing. We always have time on Mondays for a slow dinner, a board game, whatever. Tonight Jake wanted to make paper airplanes – something I’m really good at, BTW – so we did that for a couple of hours. Daddy came home, all remained pleasant. There were a few close calls with paper airplanes landing near flames and buzzing close to eyes, but no actual damage.
Then Jake got in trouble, doing something he’s done before and definitely knows he’s not supposed to do. One of those things that just gets an instant punishment, no warnings. It was about half an hour until he was supposed to get ready for bed anyway, so I told him he was done and was going to bed early. I told him to say goodnight and go get ready.
He refused.
I calmly listed the punishments he would receive if he didn’t go upstairs right away and get ready for bed. I warned him not to do anything stubborn or stupid, to just go upstairs. Probably a poor choice of words. I can see the distinction between calling his behavior stupid and calling him stupid, but he didn’t, and shot right back with “I’m not stupid, you’re stupid, and I’m not going upstairs.”
So that was that. I told him he had all of the punishments I had just listed, and if he didn’t go upstairs they’d be doubled. He went.
I don’t understand what happened. I don’t bluff about punishments, and he knows that. He knows that. He knows that if I threaten a punishment I always follow through.
This is not how it’s supposed to work. This is not how it usually works. He gets in trouble all the time for things he’s already done, but I can usually stop him from doing the next thing. Not this time. And honestly, I wouldn’t have threatened such a huge punishment if I had thought for a second I would have to follow through on it. But I did, and I do. Sometimes being a parent just sucks. I guess the only thing worse is being eight.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: punishments
Santa Claus: I almost spilled the beans
Nov 24, 2009 Kids
I put Jake to bed a little while ago. He looked huge in his bed. He’s big for eight. And I can’t believe he still believes in Santa Claus.
I took the kids to an event on Saturday where they got to hang out with Santa. Which, frankly, was a little weird. Nice weird, but still weird. I think it’s what living in Orlando would be like. Disney World would lose some of its magic if you could just go there any time. When you can sit with Santa for an hour and talk to him about more than what you want for Christmas, does he lose his magic?
I thought that might have been what happened, because as I was covering Jake up tonight (he always puts the sheet on top, and I always have to reverse it), he said “I want to see the real Santa Claus.” What do you mean, Jake? “That guy was just a helper, right? Fiona pulled his beard, and that was real, but he wasn’t the real one, was he?” They’re all helpers, Jake. Santa can’t be everywhere.
He thought for a minute, and I paid extra attention to his blanket as I tried to figure out what was going on. “Mommy, why do they always hire big fat guys to be Santa?” [treading carefully] Because in commercials he’s big and fat and jolly and if the people they hired didn’t look like that you wouldn’t believe it was Santa.
I waited to see what he’d say next. If he had asked me in that moment if Santa were real I would have told him the truth. After what seemed like forever, he decided to go with the safe choice, the choice that would assure him gifts and magic for one more year: “Next time let’s try to see the real Santa so that I can give him my list.”
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
The Spelling Bee
Nov 24, 2009 Kids
I don’t remember ever competing in a spelling bee, which is good because I would totally suck. Math was my thing (of course, we’re talking over half a lifetime ago – now I have trouble splitting a check in half). But I love watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee on TV, maybe the same way I love watching dance competitions on TV: it’s fun watching people do things really really well when you know you’d have zero chance of competing. Watching American Idol is more frustrating because I actually can sing better than some of them. But spelling? Dancing? Forget it. I can just watch and stop comparing myself to the people on TV.
Jake participated in his first spelling bee today, at school. He’s super competitive, so I was a little worried about how he’s take it if he didn’t make it through today’s rounds. We spent a lot of time yesterday talking about how important it was for him to behave well whether he won or lost, but he was tearing up even talking about the possibility that he wouldn’t make it. Major foreshadowing of what was to happen today.
The kids all sat at the front of the stage with their feet dangling, and after a few minutes of everybody kicking their feet they settled down and started to focus. They passed a microphone down the line as they spelled their first-round words. A few kids were knocked out in the first round, more in the second. But Jake sailed through “roar” and “handsome.” A lot of kids got knocked out in the third round, but he got through just fine on “figure.” I think that’s when he started to get just the teeniest bit cocky though. He started counting how many kids were left and smiling to himself. Those old lyrics started running through my head, “You never count your money, while you’re sittin’ at the table…” I thought that’s what he was doing a little bit.
He got knocked out in the fourth round, the last round of the morning. The word was “clarinet.” He forgot the “i.” He looked really sad but hopped off of the stage and went to his seat like he was supposed to. I let out a sigh of relief. I was sorry that he was out, but glad that he had handled it well. A few minutes later it was over, with six kids left out of almost 30, and they got up to go back to their classroom. I met up with Jake to say goodbye, and he refused a hug, a high five, anything coming close to a compliment. He was near tears and refused to move unless he was put through to next week’s competition. Dammit.
I reasoned with him for a minute, telling him that I was proud of how far he’d gotten (I was!) and how I’d help him study for the next bee in the spring (and I was feeling a tad guilty for not helping him study for this one). He didn’t care. He couldn’t see past not being one of those six proud kids. I was starting to get embarrassed. His entire class was out in the hall and he was going to be missed soon. I told him I was really sorry he hadn’t won, but that was life and he had to get to class. And I left. When I got to the auditorium door I looked back and he was following me. Thank God.
What I saw when I got to the hallway really surprised me. I’m used to dealing with Jake and his losing issues. But about a third of the class was in tears out in the hallway! Even the teacher looked like she was going to start crying as she told the class about some experiences from her own childhood that she thought would help them. So, we parents gave them another round of applause and they left, and so did we. And it occurred to me that while he faces competition outside of school – in Tae Kwon Do class especially – he probably doesn’t get much in school. There are no school sports. I have no idea if they play winning-and-losing games in gym class. He’s not old enough to run for the student government, where competition meets popularity – oy.
Those kids need more. They need to lose and experience it enough to know that it’s not the end of the world. And they need to win and deal with it gracefully. The only way that will happen is with more competition, where there are definite winners and losers. I applaud the third-grade teachers for having this spelling bee. I hope the competitive spirit spreads.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: competition, spelling bee
