“How much should my child weigh?” is a common question for parents. Our children are weighed regularly as babies, but as children grow and develop at different rates it’s not always easy to tell if they are a healthy weight.
Click on the links below to find out more about how to support your child to be a healthy weight. This information is relevant for children and young people aged 2 – 18 years old.
- How to check your child is a healthy weight
- School height and weight checks
- Very overweight
- Overweight
- Healthy weight
- Underweight
- 6 ways to help your child with their weight
How to talk to your child about weight: a guide for parents and care givers of children aged 4 – 11 years
Download this guide to help you talk to your child about weight in a positive way. It provides tips and advice on what to say and do to help your child be healthy and feel good about their body.
Healthy steps programme for families
How Healthy Steps works
Parents/carers can sign up at any time by completing a quiz about their current eating and physical activity habits. Once they’ve completed the quiz they will receive weekly emails on one of these three themes, based on their quiz results:
• reducing sugar
• eating 5 a day
• meal planning.
The emails will give parents/carers low-cost, easy and practical ways for the whole family to eat better and move more. As part of the programme, families are set goals or tasks to complete every other week, such as swapping out sugary fizzy drinks for a week, or adding fruit or veg to their breakfasts. Regular feedback points and an end-of-programme survey give families the opportunity to celebrate their successes, or get further tips from Better Health on making changes that they’ve found hard.
The data that is collected through these surveys will be anonymised and aggregated to measure behaviour change, using the behaviours captured via the initial sign-up quiz as a benchmark.
Further details about the programme and how to sign up can be found here.
