What is a healthy weight for my child?

I love checking Google Trends. I'm searching to find the questions that people search in Google (and if you haven't seen this hilariously far-too-accurate video If Google Was a Guy).

The questions are similar to what I hear in the pediatric office, and yet Google searches remove a filter that I still experience in receiving the questions that are really on parents' minds: the shame about asking questions about weight. With Google, we just anonymously let the questions rip.

"What is a healthy weight for my child?"

This question and its many variations ("...at 4 years of age," "...at 38 inches tall," "Is he a healthy weight?", "How can I help his weight be/stay healthy?") are asked repeatedly.

The simple answer:

Any weight. The weight they are right now.

The full story:

There is no such thing as "a healthy weight." There is no magic number, or range of numbers that define healthy, no matter if you are looking at the number on the scale or the calculated-and-plotted body mass index (BMI). Neither one knows the whole story. Weight is just the tip of the iceberg.

Sites that ask "How much should I weigh?," complete with BMI calculations and recommendations to be within a certain window know nothing of:

who you are

what your body is going through or has experienced

your goals

your habits

what you eat, how you move

your actual health

Think about this: your health (and your child's health) is not defined by the number on the scale, nor its conversion into body mass index.

Someone can have a weight within the "ideal" range, and yet, be starving themselves, restricting food groups, exercising nonstop, or haven't moved their body in meaningful ways so are experiencing muscle loss, weakness and instability.

None of those are healthy, even if the weight is within a predetermined range.

Let us please consider the corollary: a larger or smaller body than the predetermined recommendations does not mean your child is unhealthy.

What happens when a weight is deemed unhealthy by another person?

Try this on for a moment: Imagine someone says to you, "Your weight is unhealthy."

What happens? What do you think? What emotions emerge?

Emma's mom stands out in my memory. She brought Emma in for her 6 year well visit and I plotted her growth (weight and height) on the curves. I noticed she had always been growing above the 85th percentile for weight and body mass index and was consistently around the 75th percentile for height. She was consistent and when I asked about her life, everything was groovy. She was thriving with solid sleep, social engagement and academic progress, varied food, meals with parents and regular, joyful activity.

I gave her two-thumbs-up for her well check: pediatrician-approved!

And mom whispered to me, "When are you going to talk about her weight?" I asked about her concerns.

"Every year, I come in and am scolded by the doctors that I need to change what I am doing. No matter what I do, my child is at an unhealthy weight and continues to grow there. I am failing her."

My heart sank. Emma was fine. Her mom was not.

What was unhealthy? It had nothing to do with Emma's weight.

The focus on Emma's weight, the way that it was being used to define health, and her mother's sense of shame and failure were unhealthy.

((Let me get one thing straight: I am not shaming Emma's mom for her questions about weight. She had repeatedly received guidance about helping her child. She also lives in a society that repeatedly shares messages about health and weight being defined by a number, defined by others who do not see the complexity, beauty and health of the whole person. Emma's mom and her shame are shared to be understood compassionately as an experience that I dare say many, if not all, of us have raising children today.))

When someone feels that they are failing, that they are wrong, bad, and yes "unhealthy," shame creeps in. It actually runs in, blazing. And when shame is present, health decreases.

Shame is the emotion where one thinks that they are wrong, defective. Shame leads us to withdraw, retract and disconnect. We tend to do less health-supporting activities like eat nourishing foods, practice self-care. Sleep can be disrupted as the narrative of beating oneself up continues after dark.

Shame (and it's sibling stigma) are more unhealthy than any number on the scale.

The scale does not tell us about any of the factors that go into weight. Weight is just an outcome, a measurement for the sake of saying "I can measure that."

Health and what is healthy is not a number, not a result, but the dynamic process of nurturing, living, growing, learning, experimenting and continuing.

Health is not a number. It is not an absence of diagnosis or disease.

Health is a process.

So what is a healthy weight for my child? It could very likely be the weight they currently are. But the more important question is to find out about what's below the surface: the things we can't just measure.

What is the process and nurturing that's going on behind the scenes? Eating habits, relationships with food, body and people (including self!), movement, sleep. What are the factors that we do not have direct agency with, but that impact our lives and health, and perhaps even the number on the scale? These are factors not to be tweaked with in order to "dial in" on a certain number on the scale, but to understand the complexity and frank error in assessing health based off of simply what we can see about a physical body.

There will be examples where folks will say, "But Wendy, you KNOW this isn't a healthy weight." And I will respond that the full picture needs to be taken into account. We cannot judge just off of looking. The extreme examples of those suffering and particular weights happen to be a part of their experience (either in larger or smaller bodies) aren't helpful here. And they distract from focusing on the whole person - our children - right in front of us.

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Is this the first time you're hearing this type of conversation about your family's health and weight? What ah-ha's do you have? Or are there other aspects that you want to discuss? Please comment below. 

Ready to start working together to support the connection, lifelong relationships and emotional health for your family at every weight and every age? Book a consult call with Wendy now: https://WendySchoferMDScheduling.as.me/lets-meet-up-45