Good rant!
Actually it is interesting about the "skinny" thing. What I'm noticing at my kid's school is that some of the kids are "thinner" in the sense of a funhouse mirror ... it's like their entire skeleton is pushed in. Narrow face, narrow shoulders, narrow hips. Way narrower than what I remember as a kid. If you look at National Geographic photos of, say, sub-saharan Africans, even starving ones, they are not "narrow". Big wide faces and noses and teeth. Ditto for skeletons of older Europeans. But many of the kids today look scrunched.
Or, they are rather fat. I think the fatness hides the narrow skeleton?
My daughter has been eating a rather non-American diet most of her life (or rather, it is more like what my grandmother would have eaten: farm food). She is wide ... wide hips, shoulders, head. Narrow in the waist, loads of muscle, not much fat. In terms of weight charts, she would be overweight, because she just doesn't fit the weight curve for a girl.
From what I've read, a narrow developing skeleton has to do with lack of vitamin D or K? I think it's very possible that one reason people are reacting to skinny kids these days is that there is more to it than just lack of fat. The kids really are malnourished, in the sense of not getting enough of the right nutrients.
The mothers I know who breastfeed though, usually have the problem that the docs think the baby is too *fat*. Breastfed babies do get chunky! Recommending grains though is just plain weird, at 4 months. One of the most common causes of "failure to thrive" in infants is gluten intolerance, which CAN come through the mother's milk. The gluten triggers attacks the villi, which prevents absorption of nutrients. Giving "grains" is the best way to make such a child really and truly ill.
On Sun, Aug 8, 2010 at 5:08 AM, Chantelle <chantelles@cox.net> wrote:
Yes. I so much agree! To me it is so much better for their confidence!!!! ( I felt like my mom's methods degraded my confidence to some degree, or maybe to a lot of a degree, depends on the day I'm thinking about it :) :))
Dh and I were both very genetically skinny children, very very skinny and genetically skinny young adults. We both have very skinny pictures of our parents as young adults too and my parents as adults neither one has a weight problem, etc. and grandparents all didn't either, for the most part as in most of their lives they were all normal weighted people......
Anyway, I said all that to say that this is where the kid thing gets tricky. People are used to seeing fatter chunkier kids I think. Nearly every mom I've met has had a doctor start one of their babies on formula because they were too thin or get the all concerned about their too thin toddlers..... This distresses me so much because I know this is NOT healthy (putting babies on formula when it is obvious the baby was healthy and thriving and the parents are genetically tiny). Last case I heard of this, the doctor said "it's probably just genetic but you need to get the 4 month old on formula and eating cereal just to be safe". The mom had been exclusively breast feeding.
I get so upset about it that I want to just explode and if I don't know the person telling the story I usually just have to walk away because I feel like anything I say isn't' going to matter anyway......."the doctor said" is going to trump what I say, but in most situations I try to speak up a little bit.......this last time I just couldn't because the more times I hear that same tale the more I am getting so upset......
Oh and in this last case the doctor has JUST told the mom this during that past week and the baby was actually almost CHUNKY. I know it didn't get chunky in the few days it had been on formula.
Anyway...this is totally off topic and has turned into a rant...... Thanks for letting me vent here!
Chantelle
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