Editor’s Note: Michelle Icard is the author of several books on raising adolescents, including “Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen.”
CNN
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I’ve worked with middle schoolers, their parents and their schools for 20 years to help kids navigate the always awkward, often painful, sometimes hilarious in hindsight, years of early adolescence.
Most of the social and development stretch marks we gain during adolescence fade to invisibility over time. We stop holding a grudge against the kid who teased us in class for tripping, or we forgive ourselves our bad haircuts, botched friendships and cringy attempts at popularity.
But one growing pain can be dangerously hard to recover from, and ironically, it’s the one that has most to do with our physical growth.
Children are supposed to keep growing in adolescence, and so a child’s changing body during that time should not be cause for concern. Yet it sends adults into a tailspin of fear around weight, health and self-esteem.
Kids have always worried about their changing bodies. With so many changes in such a short period of early puberty, they constantly evaluate themselves against each other to figure out if their body development is normal. “All these guys grew over the summer, but I’m still shorter than all the girls. Is something wrong with me?” “No one else needs a bra, but I do. Why am I so weird?”
But the worry has gotten worse over the past two decades. I’ve seen parents becoming increasingly worried about how their children’s bodies change during early puberty. When I give talks about parenting, I often hear adults express concern and fear about their children starting to gain “too much” weight during early adolescence.
Parents I work with worry that even kids who are physically active, engaged with others, bright and happy might need to lose weight because they are heavier than most of their peers.
Why are parents so focused on weight? In part, I think it’s because our national conversations about body image and disordered eating have reached a frenzy on the topic. Over the past year, two new angles have further complicated this matter for children.
Remember Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue at the Oscars making Ozempic and its weight-loss properties a household name? Whether it’s social media or the mainstream press, small bodies and weight loss are valued. It’s clear to young teens I know that celebrities have embraced a new way to shrink their bodies.
Constant messages about being thin and fit are in danger of overexposing kids to health and wellness ideals that are difficult to extract from actual health and wellness.
Compound this with the American Academy of Pediatrics recently changing its guidelines on treating overweight children, and many parents worry even more that saying or doing nothing about their child’s weight is harmful.
The opposite is true. Parents keep their children healthiest when they say nothing about their changing shape. Here’s why.
Other than the first year of life, we experience the most growth during adolescence. Between the ages of 13 and 18, most adolescents double their weight. Yet weight gain remains a sensitive, sometimes scary subject for parents who fear too much weight gain, too quickly.
It helps to understand what’s normal. On average, boys do most of their growing between 12 and 16. During those four years, they might grow an entire foot and gain as much as 50 to 60 pounds. Girls have their biggest growth spurt between 10 and 14. On average, they can gain 10 inches in height and 40 to 50 pounds during that time, according to growth charts from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It’s totally normal for kids to gain weight during puberty,” said Dr. Trish Hutchison, a board-certified pediatrician with 30 years of clinical experience and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, via email. “About 25 percent of growth in height occurs during this time so as youth grow taller, they’re also going to gain weight. Since the age of two or three, children grow an average of about two inches and gain about five pounds a year. But when puberty hits, that usually doubles.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics released a revised set of guidelines for pediatricians in January, which included recommendations of medications and surgery for some children who measure in the obese range.
In contrast, its 2016 guidelines talked about eating disorder prevention and “encouraged pediatricians and parents not to focus on dieting, not to focus on weight, but to focus on health-promoting behaviors,” said Elizabeth Davenport, a registered dietitian in Washington, DC.
“The new guidelines are making weight the focus of health,” she said. “And as we know there are many other measures of health.”
Davenport said she worries that kids could misunderstand their pediatricians’ discussions about weight, internalize incorrect information and turn to disordered eating.
“A kid could certainly interpret that message as not needing to eat as much or there’s something wrong with my body and that leads down a very dangerous path,” she said. “What someone could take away is ‘I need to be on a diet’ and what we know is that dieting increases the risk of developing an eating disorder.”
Many tweens have tried dieting, and many parents have put their kids on diets.
“Some current statistics show that 51% of 10-year-old girls have tried a diet and 37% of parents admit to having placed their child on a diet,” Hutchison said in an email, adding that dieting could be a concern with the new American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines.
“There is evidence that having conversations about obesity can facilitate effective treatment, but the family’s wishes should strongly direct when these conversations should occur,” Hutchison said. “The psychological impact may be more damaging than the physical health risks.”
It’s not that weight isn’t important. “For kids and teens, we need to know what their weight is,” Davenport said. “We are not, as dietitians, against kids being weighed because it is a measure to see how they’re growing. If there’s anything outstanding on an adolescent’s growth curve, that means we want to take a look at what’s going on. But we don’t need to discuss weight in front of them.”
In other words, weight is data. It may or may not indicate something needs addressing. The biggest concern, according to Davenport, is when a child isn’t gaining weight. That’s a red flag something unhealthy is going on.
“Obesity is no longer a disease caused by energy in/energy out,” Hutchison said. “It is much more complex and other factors like genetics, physiological, socioeconomic, and environmental contributors play a role.”
It’s important for parents and caregivers to know that “the presence of obesity or overweight is NOT an indication of poor parenting,” she said. “And it’s not the child or adolescent’s fault.”
It’s also key to note, Hutchison said, that the new American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, which are only recommendations, are not for parents. They are part of a 100-page document that provides information to health care providers with clinical practice guidelines for the evaluation and treatment of children and adolescents who are overweight or obese. Medications and surgery are discussed in only four pages of the document.
Parents need to work on their own weight bias, but they also need to protect their children from providers who don’t know how to communicate with their patients about weight.
“Working in the field of eating disorder treatment for over 20 years, I sadly can’t tell you the number of clients who’ve come in and part of the trigger for their eating disorder was hearing from a medical provider that there was an issue or a concern of some sort with their weight,” Davenport said.
Hutchison said doctors and other health providers need to do better.
“We all have a lot of work to do when it comes to conversations about weight,” Hutchison said. “We need to approach each child with respect and without (judgment) because we don’t want kids to ever think there is something wrong with their body.”
The right approach, according to American Academy of Pediatrics training, is to ask parents questions that don’t use the word “weight.” One example Hutchison offered: “What concerns, if any, do you have about your child’s growth and health?”
Working sensitively, Hutchison said she feels doctors can have a positive impact on kids who need or want guidance toward health-promoting behaviors.
Davenport and her business partner in Sunny Side Up Nutrition, with input from the Carolina Resource Center for Eating Disorders, have gotten more specific. They have created a resource called Navigating Pediatric Care to give parents steps they can take to ask health care providers to discuss weight only with them — not with children.
“Pediatricians are supposed to ask permission to be able to discuss weight in front of children,” Davenport said. “It’s a parent’s right to ask this and advocate for their child.”
Davenport advises parents to call ahead and schedule an appointment to discuss weight before bringing in a child for a visit. She also suggests calling or emailing ahead with your wishes, though she admits it may be less effective in a busy setting. She said to print out a small card to hand to the nurse and physician at the appointment. You can also say in front of the child, “We prefer not to discuss weight in front of my child.”
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