-By Warner Todd Huston
A mom from Naples, Florida is a bit upset that her 11-year-old daughter’s school is calling her athletic child a fatty.
Mom Kristen Grasso was told in a letter sent to her home that her daughter, Lilly, was overweight and in the “at risk” category. Below is a photo of this “overweight” girl.
The decidedly non-overweight Lilly Grasso
Does she look overweight to you?
“Lily is tall,” Mrs. Grasso told WFTX news. “She’s athletic. She’s solid muscle. But by no means is she overweight.”
Clearly this young girl is not overweight, but that is what mom was told in a letter from the Collier County Health Department, the agency that evaluated her child’s health at school.
Mrs. Grasso is worried that the wrong message is being sent to many kids that are already getting to that self-conscious age.
“My concern is you know, kids that see the results of this test that may be classified as overweight that aren’t and the self-esteem issues that they may get,” she said
But the County Health Dept. says it has no choice. These screenings are now a state law. They have to send these letters. Plus parents are allowed to “opt out.”
“All health departments in the state do screenings for school-aged children,” said Collier County Health Department spokeswoman Deb Millsap. “Now, parents can opt out.”
But Grasso says that when she got the supposed “opt out” form it was so long and hard to understand that she had no idea what it meant. Not only that, but she had no idea that the schools would be screening kids for their weight in the first place.
So, is this weight screening a good idea? Is a kid’s weight even the business of a school or government official? We’ve seen this before in other cities, too, schools sending letters home telling parents their kids are fat… or “at risk” because of their weight, anyway.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, MrConservative.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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