Focusing on child’s weight can cause serious harm

WHEN I was growing up I had a friend whose mother put her on a diet when she was 10 because she was “too chubby”. This friend has been on and off diets ever since.

She has a terrible body image and no confidence in how she looks. So when I read that Nadia Udin had gone on TV to tell the world she weighs her six-year-old daughter every day, I felt very sorry for that little girl.

Udin has justified her decision by saying she decided to monitor her daughter Shifaria’s weight when bullies in school started calling her chubby.

She believes keeping a close eye on her daughter’s weight was far preferable to Shifaria being bullied because of her size.

“We’ve got to be careful because of the name calling, she’s going to be more affected by that. Why not take control and do something about it and be in control with her?” Udin said.

But surely all she is doing is teaching her daughter that she must be thin to be happy and popular.

Udin (right) is unapologetic. She says she weighs all of her children and is adamant it won’t have a negative psychological impact on them because she weighed Shifaria’s older sister, Iman, who she says appears completely unaffected at the age of 10.

Dr Paul Carroll, a GP practicing in Dublin, is adamant weighing your child will not help them in any way: “As part of a GP’s contract with the HSE in Ireland, we are supposed to weigh children at ages two and five.

“This is part of an intervention to prevent childhood obesity.

“However, there is no evidence this has any effect at all.”

Carroll continued: “If a doctor measuring weight twice in a child’s life makes no difference, then parents weighing kids every day will definitely not help, particularly because kids grow at different rates and ages.

“They have growth spurts and changes as they grow, which are mostly completely normal.”

While you can understand the wish of every mother to protect her child from name calling, focusing daily on your child’s weight can only do long-term damage to their body image and potentially lead to serious issues down the line.

There are around 200,000 people in Ireland affected by eating disorders.

According to figures from the Health Research Board, 12pc of all child and adolescent admissions to psychiatric units and hospitals in 2016 were due to an eating disorder.

Carroll said: “Weighing a child daily makes it seem like they are the cause of the problem, when in my experience the cause of the problem is more often than not the food choices the parents make on the children’s behalf and the lack of exercise the kids get outside school times.” Parental blame is something Udin touched on in her interview. She said she believes if her daughter gains weight this would indicate she’s doing something wrong as a parent and reflect badly on her. It’s true, when you see an adult with a very overweight child, it’s not the child you blame, it’s the parent. Udin is also right about the fact that being overweight makes a child’s life difficult.

Being overweight and called names can shatter a child’s self-esteem.

CHILDREN have been known to cut the labels off their clothes so that nobody can see they are wearing clothes two to three ages too big. They often become isolated and depressed.

But the buck stops with the parents. Ninety per cent of the food children eat comes from their own home.

Carroll said: “One of the biggest problem we GPs see in overweight kids is that the food they eat is of low nutritional value.

“This is usually down to the choices the parents make for their children.”

Udin’s fixation with staying slim comes from her own experience of putting on four stone when she had her first child.

While her intentions may be good and she may currently see no adverse effects on her 10-year-old and six-year-old, eating disorders don’t usually develop until the teenage years, so the damage she is doing may not be evident until later.

Obviously, it’s sensible for parents to teach their children about maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but Udin’s obsession with the scales is taking things too far.

This intense and unhealthy focus on weight so young will most likely lead to her daughter experiencing an unhealthy relationship with food and her body later in life.

Just like my friend, who still weighs herself every day and obsesses about every pound gained.

When you see an adult with a very overweight child, it’s not the child you blame, it’s the parent