The quick answer to this question is that parents should rarely weigh their children. But like most questions in life an explanation works better. To start, most kids have a healthy body composition. Parents can often tell this just by observation. If your child looks to be normally proportioned then weighing them may just bring unneeded stress or anxiety. This stress may lead to being too focused on diet and numbers and can lead to an unhealthy relationship with food. If your child looks fine and their healthcare provider has not mentioned that there is a problem then my suggestion is to only get their weight once per year during their yearly physical.
But you may ask, should you follow your child’s weight at home if there is an issue with body composition and your child’s healthcare provider has told us that we need to make changes? My answer is the same. Rarely should a parent have the need to follow their child’s weight in this situation. For most of these kids there should be changes that are happening with diet and activity level and then follow up with the healthcare provider. Parents should be able to tell by observation if their children’s weight to length ratio is improving. The follow up with a healthcare provider will then give you the complete answer.
The only time I would say that a parent should follow a child’s weight at home is when there will be an extended period of time between visits at the doctor and the parent needs to know if the changes they have made are working. In this case I would recommend infrequent checks. Monthly weight checks at home would be the most frequent that I would suggest. This does not put undue stress on the child but also gives them and their parents a chance to evaluate how they are doing and to see if they need to continue to make changes.
My thoughts on older children sometimes are slightly different. If I have a teenager that is motivated and wants to put in the effort to better their fitness and they want to follow their weight a bit more closely I would say once per week would be ok. My advice is to generally measure the first thing in the morning after voiding. This way they will be getting a fair comparison. In the end I want them to understand that regardless of the number they are getting healthier just from the changes they are making.
Why NOt?
You may ask, why not obtain your child’s weight more often? There are several reasons. The main reason is to not cause them to develop an eating disorder or to create a bad relationship with food. The more frequently that you talk about your child’s weight and worry about the number the more likely that are going to develop anxiety and stress about their weight. Remember we want them to be healthy physically and mentally. Let’s try to help with their fitness in a way that is not shaming or degrading. A second reason not to measure your child’s weight frequently is because there is too much variation day to day. Checking day to day or even week to week may not give you a very good picture of what the trend actually is. A third reason not to weigh your child frequently is that it takes some time to see the effects of the changes you make. Fitness takes patients. You can read more about this in a previous blog we published.
To wrap it up we want to be helpful while not creating stress. Most of the time parents just need to be supportive in getting their children more active and making positive changes to their energy consumption. We want them to be helpful in a positive way so that their children can reach a better level of fitness and not have any mental baggage brought along. In the end we want them to Move It and have a joy filled life.
