For parents to define if their child is overweight is not simple because weight depends on both age and height and children have this annoying habit of inexorable growth, they just don’t stop! (Our 16 year old son has just hit 6 foot 3 inches – we are going to have to stop feeding him steroid enriched chicken!) The research shows that parents are reluctant to admit that their children are overweight. There is an objective way to avoid any doubt. I recommend that you involve your children in this process – they also deserve objective feedback to know where they are in the spectrum. If they are at the higher end then this allows a less emotional, more ‘scientific’ discussion to occur.

As with adults we use, the Body Mass Index, or BMI, calculation which factors in height as well as weight. For children we need a further layer – a standardised chart that brings in their age. Fortunately the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the USA has done all the hard work of collecting the data. If you go to this link – Clinical Growth Charts – you can download the charts and plot your children’s BMI and age over time. There are a lot of charts on offer, which can be confusing. I suggest you download, under the ‘Children 2 to 20 years (5th-95th percentile)’ heading the Girls/Boys ‘BMI-for-age’ chart.

To work out your child’s BMI to plot on the chart go to this link – Child and Teen BMI Calculator (we Aussies will need to click on ‘Metric’ to switch input data to kgs) and fill in the information. If they are at the 85th percentile or higher they are overweight. This means that they weigh the same or more than 85% of their peers. At the 95th percentile they are obese.

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