A MUM has questioned the validity of testing children's BMI after her healthy 10-year-old son was labelled overweight.

Gemma Kershaw said her son Harley, who attends Dane Ghyll Primary School, was left feeling anxious and now regularly steps onto the scales after being told he weighs more than 'normal'.

"There’s nothing wrong with him," said Ms Kershaw, of Ramsden Street, Barrow.

“He’ll grab his stomach and say ‘I’m getting a belly again mum’ ...and I know he weighs himself because it was only last night that he came downstairs and said he’s nearly twice his sister's weight. He’s 10 and in size 10-11 clothes."

She hit out at the relevance of checking children's Body Mass Indexes after new figures revealed more than a third of children in the county are now overweight or obese by the age of 11.

“They don’t take other factors into account like muscle mass or bone density," she said.

"My son is now also classed as overweight and yet, he’s a normal sized boy in normal sized clothes.

"The letters sent out say that being overweight can lead to mental and physical health issues. Well they certainly will if the child reads that letter."

The mum was not alone in her concerns after calls for action around child obesity were made by Ulverston councillor Mark Wilson.

He said the town council plans to work with schools, supermarkets and health groups, to combat rising child obesity levels in the district.

But Ms Kershaw said: “Do you remember being made aware of weight issues when you were a child

"Because I don’t.. And yet now my son is highly aware that he’s being called overweight and is constantly looking at his belly.

"He’s an outgoing type of kid that’s always laughing and joking but he keeps things that are troubling him bottled up.

“I know he’s anxious about it at times. He stopped training at rugby for a while last year due to ankle injury, but then he announced he needed to go back to training because his belly is looking big.

“As far as I’m concerned, the BMI thing is total rubbish. It’s laughable that a height and weight calculator can announce a child is overweight when you can clearly see with your eyes that he’s not. I binned my letter and I know a lot of other parents in his class did the same.

“If your child is overweight then you would already know by looking at them and a responsible parent will already be acting on it. If a child is overweight and the parent isn’t doing anything to address it, then a letter to state the child is fat isn’t going to make them act.”

Commenting on social media, Mail reader Tracy Silverton said: “Personally I don’t give permission for my child to be weighed. I believe all children as they are growing will go through chunkier phases then lean out as they grow taller. To weigh a child is bad enough but to then class them as obese, write letters home branding them as such can lay foundations to lifetime of misery and obsession over weight.”

Ange Mullen said: “Maybe this is why there are so many children with eating issues if they are being told they need to lose weight when they don’t.”

Eustace de Sousa, the national lead for children, young people and adults at Public Health England, said: “The National Child Measurement Programme is invaluable for us in assessing the health of the nation’s children. It’s also an objective source of advice for parents on healthy weight in children. BMI is a straightforward and cost-effective way of accurately measuring a person’s weight status. It is used widely across the world, which helps to make valuable international comparisons.”