Jun042008
What if your child is not the standard size?
Filed under Uncategorized by Beck at 11:39 am on Jun 04 2008
Image via Wikipedia
Yesterday my son was sick and as he got worse as the day went on I decided to take him to the doctor. I usually like to wait a few days as often they get better, but with him having spent the weekend with his Dad I didn’t know if he had already been unwell.
Anyway it was just as well I did as his lungs were starting to sound like he was getting a chest infection and thus he was put on antibiotics – today he is nearly like his old self again. Anyway that is not why I am writing.
While at the doctors – the doctor weighed and measured him – they need to do this to calculate the dose of the antibiotics. However, when the doctor went to put his weight into the computer – the program would not let him as my son was outside the parameters for a two (nearly three year old). The computer would only let him put a weight in of up to 18kg and he was 21kg and a height up to 108cm and he is 110cm.
My son is big for his age – which can be a pain at times – particularly when he was younger as kids and parents would think he was much older and expect him to act older (like when he was nearly two and hurt a five year old who had pushed him).
It got me thinking how stressful standard heights and weights are… what if you child weighs too much or too little. Are we making a situation that may make our children paroThe standard weight and height chart that is used in Australia dates back to the 70’s surely they have the stats available that it could be updated.
If a child’s measurements cannot be entered onto a doctors computer – how can they be properly monitored – surely the computer needs to be capable to accept variations.
What is a normal size anyway?
