Laura Newell: Advice from a health professional is rarely a personal attack

A quarter of Aussie children aged between two and 17 are classed as overweight or obese with a third of adults falling into the same camp.

A whole host of health problems can follow on from carrying too much fat — diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, to name just a few.

But, in good news, we can often prevent or reduce obesity and thus the associated risks. In fact, I write this as someone who is obese and taking a breakthrough medication to help me edge ever closer toward a healthy weight.

Common sense also tells us, however, that if we can help our kids stay in a healthy weight range to start with, they are more likely to be able to maintain that throughout their lives.

This is why weight checks are included in child health appointments — with many professionals using body mass index as a tool to measure that.

For those who don’t know, your BMI is calculated by taking your weight and comparing it to your height. It’s a blunt tool of comparison — and not one recommended in isolation for children — but relatively useful when looking at whole-population health or for those who need to quickly look for risk factors in someone’s health profile, for example, a child or school health nurse.

Now we know all that, it’s important to point out that those children with a higher BMI aren’t necessarily unhealthy.

And to point out — perhaps more pertinently, given one Perth mum’s outrage over the use of BMI in her child’s four-year-old kindy health check — that if a nurse offers you advice on diet and fitness for your child it isn’t a personal attack on your parenting.

If it’s done right, the child will never know the conversation has taken place and it’s simply a nudge to take stock (really truthfully ask whether a few too many treats have snuck in too frequently, or has the rain meant they actually haven’t been outside as much as usual), or maybe check in with a GP for a second opinion.

Rest assured, even if your child’s BMI is on the higher end, it may be perfectly within their expected growth range when you plot it against those taken from birth.

In fact, it’s what those little purple files you are given in hospital when your child is born are partly designed to help with.

Within that folder lie pages for recording vaccinations, height, weight, head circumference, milestones and helpline numbers for almost any child health and wellbeing topic you could imagine.

When matched with regular visits to the local child health nurse and GP, the folders give you a fantastic picture of where your child is sitting when it comes to development.

And if that all looks good when you check it out, you might well choose to entirely ignore the nurse’s well-meaning advice — it’s done its job.

We are so ridiculously lucky to have these services at our fingertips here in WA — and all for free!

Are they perfect? Good Lord, no.

I’ve had my fair share of overly blunt nurses in my time as a mum and a couple of times where when I’ve checked what they’ve said with a doctor, the doctor has in part (or in full) disagreed.

But the point is, they prompted me to see a doctor thus ensuring the health of my child long-term. That can only be a good thing.