Beware the class on health and fitness
Although most of us would agree that classes on health and fitness can be fun and informative for many kids, they can be stressful for some and positively destructive for others.
Let me give you an example of the latter: a young girl in Middle School who was seeing me for the first time reported her P.E. teacher as having divided her class into three groups: “the top models” (girls whose BMI were below average, i.e. the “skinny” ones), the “averages” and “the biggest losers”. Can you imagine? She and three other girls were consigned to “biggest losers” and the teacher had them record their food intake and gave them dietary advice. This same teacher weighed all the kids, figured their BMI and posted the results for all to see and compare.
Never mind how triggering this could be for an eating disordered patient--- how humiliating could this be for a child of larger than average size?! This is wrong, and yet it happens.
We have heard of “health” teachers measuring upper arm circumference and using calipers to measure “fat mass”. Same objection. Imagine this being done at your work place—no one would humiliate adults in this fashion (they would protest, refuse or walk out), but children and even teens are helpless to fight back.
If your child has or has had an eating disorder, please be pro-active in finding out what takes place in your child’s PE or health class and SPEAK UP if it’s inappropriate. You have the right—and the duty-- to refuse dangerous and potentially humiliating interventions. Be informed and then inform us. This is your forum to speak out.
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I realize that all schools have good intentions for teaching kids about health and fitness. The problem is that many adults have a diet based mentality when it comes to food and fitness, and often the health curriculum reflects that.
My daughter was taught how to keep a food diary and count calories in her 5th grade health class. (A good math exercise.) They did science experiments where fatty foods were placed on paper towels and the fat content measured by the size of the grease spot. They were shown parts of the movie "Super-size Me." They used the internet to find nutrition data (You can imagine the sidebar ads on those kinds of sites.) and measured and entered their heights and weights on mypyramid.gov to see how many calories per day they should be eating.
As an excellent student, my daughter became an excellent dieter, because she was taught all the right dieting skills.
At the same time, she was also praised by her gym coach for being one of the fastest girls in her grade. No one thought anything of it or called me when she began running laps around the school yard non-stop every day as part of her "training" for the timed one mile race.
Six months later my daughter was in the hospital with medical complications and a diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa.
We need to stop teaching our kids that life is one long diet and that they are supposed to be gaining weight at this stage of their lives! I fear that the latest anti-obesity campaign will only add to this problem.
Hey, if your child has an eating disorder, no one ever weighs them but their eating disorder doc.... BMI is highly overrated.... Looks are too... my daughters 7th and 8th grade class did the biggest loser and were even working out to that Jillian ladies tapes.... some of those kids are very tiny and had no business losing weight in the first place...