Maternal and Child Health Professional: Well thanks Kim. We’ve finished taking Josh’s measurements today, but we need to talk about those.

Parent: Oh okay, why’s that?

Maternal and Child Health Professional: There’s a problem, with Josh’s weight – he’s fat.

Parent: He’s overweight?

Maternal and Child Health Professional: He’s definitely overweight – he e’s really quite fat. Um, if you have a look at the BMI chart here, you can see that he’s way up here – far too high. Um, and really, that’s a problem that needs to be addressed.

Parent: A problem. Well he’s much smaller than lots of the other kids he plays with.

Maternal and Child Health Professional: Yes, well nowadays that’s probably true, because we know a lot of children are far much, much heavier than they should be. Um, so that’s probably true. but that doesn’t mean that Josh doesn’t have a problem.

Parent: Okay, so what do I need to do about it? 

Maternal and Child Health Professional: Well it’s very important of course, because we know that, you know, children who are overweight as kids are probably going to grow and be overweight and be fat adults, and have problems with heart disease and diabetes. So it is something that needs to be looked at. In terms of what to do – the things that you can change are physical activity – Josh can be more active, or you need to look at ways you can change his eating – to improve his eating. 

Parent: Oh, okay. So how do I do that? 

Maternal and Child Health Professional: Well you need to really go away and have a think about what are you doing wrong now, and how you can change that. And hopefully in six months time things will be looking a lot better.

Parent: Okay, well…

Maternal and Child Health Professional: Okay – I’ll see you next time.

Parent: Okay. Thanks for letting me know.