Laura Williams couldn't believe the letter her 9-year-old daughter Gwendolyn Williams was sent home with by school administrators. The Staten Island, NYC, school calls the letters "Fitnessgrams," but Laura believes they are problematic.
The school's letter claimed that Gwendolyn, who is 4'1" and weighs 66 pounds, is overweight.
“At first I thought, is this some misunderstanding? Is this just like, did they, like, switch my BMI with somebody else’s?” Gwendolyn says in the video below. “But then I noticed that it wasn’t a mistake and they were actually calling me overweight.”
The letters are put in envelopes and given to students to give to their parents — of course, every student opens them.
“What really concerned me is that then she started asking questions about, you know, she touched her thigh, and she said, ‘Is this what they mean?’ And I said, ‘Gwen, no, everybody’s thigh jiggles like that,'” Laura says. “It just really disturbed me on a deep level.”
The letter said Gwendolyn's BMI is too high and that she is overweight by exactly one pound.
“I worry about other girls who maybe aren’t as fit as Gwen, and maybe that affects them in a negative way,” Laura says.
Gwendolyn says a friend of hers, who is already self-conscious about her size, was in tears because the letter said she was obese. While the school may have the best intentions, many parents believe this kind of thing should be left to a pediatrician.
The parents think a compromise would be giving the letters to them during a parent-teacher conference so the kids don't have to be subjected to the scrutiny. Nevertheless, with the assurance of her mother, Gwendolyn knows that she is doing just fine.
"I know I am not overweight because I am only 66 pounds," she said.
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