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Fretting about girls weight not a good idea
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Q: Our 4-year-old daughter’s weight (25 pounds) is at the first percentile for her age, but she is otherwise healthy, energetic, creative, polite and well-behaved. Our only real problem occurs at meals during which she picks at and dawdles over her food. We end up coaxing her to finish, telling her how important it is for her to eat so she’ll grow, and so on. Sometimes, she has been there so long we’ve taken her plate away, but we are reluctant to do that because we don’t want her losing any weight. Are we worrying for nothing?
    A: First of all, let’s understand and put into proper perspective what it means that your daughter’s weight is at the first percentile.
Percentiles are nothing more than a means of comparing people along a certain dimension or concerning a certain skill. In the case of your daughter’s weight, the first percentile means that 99 out of a typical group of 100 American girls her age weigh more than she does. If, for example, there are one-half million 4-year-old girls currently living in America, then 5,000 of them weigh approximately 25 pounds.
No matter what, a certain number of people are always going to be at the first percentile. For example, I am at the first percentile with respect to pole vaulting. But staying with the current example, if the lightest 4-year-old girl in America weighed 50 pounds, then 50 pounds would be the first percentile. My point is that weighing 25 pounds at age four does not, in and of itself, indicate a problem.
My 10-year-old granddaughter’s weight has been between the first and fifth percentiles since she was very young. Nonetheless, she’s always been the perfect picture of health.
With respect to your daughter’s appetite, if she’s healthy, then she’s eating enough. When she’s consumed what her body needs, the healthy thing for her to do is to stop eating. Overeating is not a good thing for humans of any age. Encouraging your daughter to eat when her brain is telling her not to eat is not going to accomplish anything. The constant coaxing is, however, putting her at the center of attention during meals (not a proper place for a child under any circumstances other than a piano recital), turning meals into unpleasant occasions for all concerned, and quite possibly setting the stage for the development of an eating disorder. When the family sits down to eat a meal together, you need to talk about anything but your daughter’s eating habits.
Be proactive about this. Before you sit down to eat, you and your husband should decide exactly what you’re going to talk about during the meal. Settle on three topics and stick with them. When your daughter begins picking at her food, ask her if she wants to be excused. Tell her it’s all right if she wants to get up from the table and go play. Enough about her eating already!
Are you and your husband worrying for nothing? I’m going to assume that you’ve discussed your daughter’s weight with her physician, and since you didn’t make mention of a problem, either he’s not concerned or he’s taking a “wait-and-see” attitude. In either case, yes, you’re probably worrying for nothing. You’re doing a lot of talking for nothing too.
   
Psychologist Rosemond answers questions on his website, www.rosemond.com.

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From the book 'Outliers' comes proof that good health is more than just genetics
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Friends Jim Young, left, Mike Natale, Jeff Natale and Ryan Kiernan were on Greenwich High School football team together and Jim and Mike were captains. Jim, who was the youngest in Sherry Young's family, was welcome in the homes of the other three boys who still had siblings around and grandparents near. - photo by Sherry Young
As I look back on my life and the lives of others, both personally and in the reading I have done, I am convinced of the necessity of positive human contact in our lives. We are doubly blessed when we are able to make good friends or are a part of a family where we are accepted and loved.

Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers tells of a time in the 1950s when Dr. Stewart Wolf met a physician who practiced in the area of Roseto, Pennsylvania. Roseto was settled by a group of Italian families from Roseto, Italy, who re-created their life again in America.

This was in the 1950s before drugs and measures to prevent heart disease became important. In their conversation the physician said, You know, Ive been practicing for 17 years. I get patients from all over, and I rarely find anyone from Roseto under the age of 65 with heart disease.

Wolf was surprised by these words as, It was impossible to be a doctor, common sense said, and not see heart disease.

Wolf enlisted the aid of a sociologist and friend John Bruhn to help him. They found, There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didnt have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didnt have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. Thats it.

They checked into diet, genetics and possibilities of something in the foothills of eastern Pennsylvania but nothing made sense.

What they found was that Rosetans visited one another, stopping to chat in Italian on the street, say, or cooking for one another in their backyards. (Researchers) learned about the extended family clans that underlay the towns social structure. They saw how many homes had three generations living under one roof and how much respect grandparents commanded. They went to Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and saw the unifying and calming effect of the church. They counted 22 separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2,000 people. They picked up on the particular egalitarian ethos of the community, which discouraged the wealthy from flaunting their success and helped the unsuccessful obscure their failures.

What they found eventually convinced the medical establishment to look beyond the individual and understand the culture people are part of their friends, families and town they came from. They determined that the people we surround ourselves with and the values of the world we inhabit have a profound effect on who we are.

Likely, this study could have been done with other ethnicities. However, my family's experiences with the Italian families in Connecticut ring true to the study. Our hungry and growing sons, especially our youngest son, Jim, who was left home alone with two beady-eyed parents, all had some memorable experiences being fed and loved in the Cos Cob multigenerational families. Proof of the African proverb, It takes a village to raise a child.

We live in an age when the contact we have with people often is on the internet, and many of us live among strangers. Unless we make the effort to reach out, we will become isolated, especially as we age. The Rosetan study is proof that reaching out and communicating may be good for our health.
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