‘She needs to cut carbs’: Mum scolds nurse for telling 2-year-old daughter to lose weight – saying milk is as bad as ice cream
A mother has criticized a nurse who urged her to cut carbohydrates from her toddler’s diet.
The anonymous parent, from Australia, took her two-year-old for an annual checkup with her Maternal & Child Health nurse earlier this year.
Speak against MamaMiathe woman explained how her daughter had her weight and height measured during the appointment.
After this, the nurse told the mother that her toddler needed to lose weight because she fell in the 70th percentile – which makes her above average height.
She claims the nurse said, “You have to cut out all the fruit and all the carbs.” And if you’re giving her milk, you might as well give her a bowl of ice cream before bed.”
The outraged mother ignored the nurse’s warning – despite her toddler being overweight. Stock photo
The parent went on to explain that she hadn’t fed her daughter “garbage” – insisting she was a “big eater”, who enjoyed eating everything from curries to chicken stir fry.
Although the mother allows her toddler to eat sugar, she said it is “generally kept to a minimum” and her daughter eats fruit most of the time.
However, the nurse went on to say that together they had to eliminate fruit from her daughter’s diet.
Despite always being confident about the way she fed her family, the mother says she left the appointment feeling she had “hurt” her child in some way.
Before they parted ways, the nurse told the mother to carefully consider the food pyramid before serving her toddler a meal.
While the parent said she was grateful to have access to free medical advice, she admitted that the appointments often left her “anxious and stressed that my child hadn’t reached a very specific milestone.”
She added: “I wondered what parents with children who score higher on this scale would hear.
“Honestly, I’d rather not know what percentile my child’s weight is in, because unless there’s something clearly wrong with her, it’s not entirely clear to me why we’re measuring it.”
As a result, the mother argued that parents should not place too much importance on the percentile their child falls into.
Once the shock wore off, the woman also decided not to drastically change her daughter’s diet out of concern that it could lead to her developing disordered eating habits later in life.
Despite being confident in her upbringing, the parent admitted that the nurse’s comments were “thrown.” [her] through a loop’.
She added, “I worry about what it might do to someone in a more vulnerable position than mine.”
According to the health serviceCan children from the age of one year receive full-fat cow’s milk?
Parents are encouraged to give their children 350 ml of milk per day or two servings of food made from milk, such as cheese or yogurt.