Dear parent: Your child is fat
Your lovely child comes home with a note from the school nurse with a rude awakening:
“Dear Mrs. Cupcake, during our annual body mass index screening of all elementary school students, we found that little Johnny is overweight. Please contact us so we can discuss healthy eating choices.”
The note may not quite read this way, but school districts around the nation increasingly find it necessary to inform parents that their elementary, middle school or high school student is overweight or obese.
The good news is that Monroe County has to send far fewer of these kinds of notes to parents than other counties in the state. The Florida Health Department’s 2012 obesity study puts Monroe County pretty low on the overweight children scale. About 9.5 percent of Keys middle and high school students are considered obese, leaving only three other counties with lower rates. Hendry County’s 19.2 percent obesity rate for middle and high school students, for instance, is highest in the state.
A related figure: 17.2 percent of Keys mothers were themselves obese when they gave birth in 2012. That’s why health experts believe eating habits may be handed down from parents, and thus the note to the home.
Pam Lopez, owner of The Learning Center of Key West, not only mentions the problem to parents, she puts her foot down on what the kids can eat from home.
“I was looking to implement a program in my school to get parents more involved by educating them as to why their children are chubby and the health problems associated with children being overweight,” Lopez said.
“Overweight children suffer from lots of health issues, including heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, and joint problems,” she said. “Being overweight is a cycle that begins when they’re young.”
As a result Lopez and her staff won’t allow the 72 children in her program to bring certain food into the center.
“We put a new policy in our handbook that told parents there could be no candy in lunches, no sugary drinks,” Lopez said. “We sent home a list of healthy snacks they could have, such as fruit, cheese, crackers, and other healthy snacks.”
Lopez also built in more physical activities into the daily schedule. “We’ve increased by more than 15 minute our outside time,” she said. “Exercise is important, and we give them plenty of water, it’s important.”
Lopez has been in contact with the Monroe County Health Department’s efforts to educate parents and the community (17.4 percent of adults are obese in Monroe County) on changing diets and activity.
Chris Tittle, the public information officer for the Florida Department of Health, Monroe County, said the Keys are not in bad shape compared to other counties but that “we need to maintain our progress and not rest on our laurels.”
According to Tittle, the health department (which provides school nurses) reaches out to parents to educate them.
We have a nurse in each school, and every year they do body mass index (BMI) checks on the elementary school kids,” he said. “What they’ll do is see a kid whose BMI is low or high, and send a note home to the parents.”
Though it’s a direct way to alert parents, the adult in the home sometimes takes umbrage at the district getting involved in such a personal family subject, Tittle said.
“We would like the parent to understand that we want to work with them to make sure their kids are healthy, and to please not take the note home personally,” he said.
“We’re not doing this to tell parents ‘You’re doing a bad job being a parent,’” he said. “We want to partner with you about your child’s health, there’s something amiss and want you to work with us to help bring that child’s weight under control.”
The Monroe County School District’s cafeteria’s must follow the diet and portion control policies developed in Tallahassee; in recent years the district has removed soda machines, candy machines, and other avenues to unhealthy snack-dom on school campuses.
But the cure to overweight children and adults remain the same throughout the years: a diet of vegetables, fruits, non-carbonated drinks (sorry, alcohol is a big weight creator); small portions of chicken, fish, and even less red meat.
“There’s always been that measure of at least 30 minutes of physical activity a day for good health,” Tittle said, “and that includes children. But what we need is more vigorous exercise, like tennis, softball leagues, heavy exercising for at least an hour. It’s that heavy exercise that keeps you active and helps bring you down to that good weight.”
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