Cotton-Pickin’ Days

My youngest is a petite kid, and also breastfed. It irritated me to no end when the doctor remarked offhandedly that they’d “keep an eye on his growth” because he was on the lower end of the chart ranges. So my kid isn’t a porker like a lot of wee ones, and this is a problem? He’s not a scrawny bag of sticks either. His “curve” on the chart goes up nicely as one would expect for a healthy child, he’s just not in the “top 80%” range. You just can’t win at this “growth chart” game.

Hopefully the new chart standards will let parents of normal healthy kids not have to take so much flak because their baby isn’t pushing the edge of obese.

Not that I feel strongly on the issue.. lol!

Deb L: So this problem isn’t mostly limited to Asian families and doctors, then! Very interesting.

I always tell people who’re worried that as long as their child is active, happy, and normal in other bodily functions, they probably don’t have much to worry about. Winning at the percentile game is just getting to be TOO MUCH!

Exactly! I think parents always worry about something, but worrying over things we can’t change seems silly.

I know someone who almost lost her kids to CPS because her daughter was on the low end of the scale while she was a nurseling! Also, myy nephew underwent testing for cystic fibrosis when he was a toddler because his doctor couldn’t believe that he could be that petite, and still be healthy! I hope the new numbers save a lot of moms a lot of headaches in the future! Heaven knows the current numbers have their flaws!

Joan: Those are horrible stories! Hopefully, with knowledgeable moms like you, we’ll have less instances of this kind of ignorance.

[...] The new World Health Organization (WHO) child growth chart that I mentioned earlier this week is now available online. [...]

[...] The new World Health Organization (WHO) child growth chart that I mentioned earlier this week is now available online. [...]