By the time students get to high school, almost 30 percent of students are considered obese or overweight, which is why public schools in New York have been using ‘Fitnessgrams’ to help measure students’ health from a young age.
After one mom witnessed her third grader pinching at her skin after being sent home with her own Fitnessgram that called her fat, however, she slammed the school for fat-shaming her healthy 9-year-old who weighed just 66 pounds at the time.
In 2014, Gwendolyn Williams and her classmates were sent home with their Fitnessgrams, and were instructed not to open them. However, like the rest of her curious classmates, she opened the letter, which was only sealed with a small sticker, and was devastated that she was considered “overweight.”
“My daughter is thin; she knows she doesn’t have a weight problem, but that night, I caught her grabbing the skin near her waist, and she asked me, ‘is this what they were talking about?”‘ said mom Laura Bruiji Williams. “It was awful to see.”
Many other students were confused and upset when they found out they were obese and spent the night crying, however, the school claims they were instructed not to open the letters in the first place. “With body image such an issue, it’s amazing to me that these letters weren’t mailed to parents,” Williams said. “What kid’s not going to open that?”
Aside from the school handling the issue poorly and devastating young children’s self-esteem, Williams also felt the entire fitness assessment needs to be revised since body mass index (BMI) has long been criticized by health experts because they don’t accurately measure body fat.
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[Featured image: newyork.cbslocal]
School Sends Little Girl Home With Note Saying She’s Too Fat is an article from: LifeDaily