<p>^^ I suggest that you talk to the health center before you talk to a lawyer. </p>
<p>Can your DS give you access to her health records? Pretty sure that can be done. Her doctor would probably look at those records free just to help your DS out. </p>
<p>The last thing you want to do is spend money on a lawyer and then the school hands over a reasoned set of symptomatic reasons why they are concerned, as the money would then be wasted. If you have not seen your DS’s health records, I recommend not spending outside money until you are sure the school has no medical reasons other than BMI. </p>
<p>@awcntdb, I’ll ask about menses and make sure she’s regular - that would be a bigger concern although pretty common with athletes at her age. The family history thing is so important. OT: We have the exact same cholesterol issue in my family, which I learned about from a brilliant NP I had in my 20’s. My cholesterol was 300+ although I was young, thin and vegetarian, but she told me to look at the ratio and mine was equal HDL and LDL so she told me not to worry. She said families can have high cholesterol, nothing to do with dietary cholesterol. I discovered that we all have high cholesterol and I actually talked my mom into stopping her statin drugs 20 years ago based on the family history theory.</p>
<p>@awcntdb, yes my current strategy is to call the health center and just ask what’s going on and get records. Tell them I’m assuming there must be a health problem with my D or they would not be so aggressively following her and daily testing. If they say, no it’s just a numbers game and we need her to gain weight, then I’ll decide how to proceed. If there’s a medical issue, I can’t believe they would not have told her, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt until I hear it. D assures me they have gone over her bloodwork and all tests and told her she is perfectly healthy - since of course they were first worried about thyroid and whatever else it could be… </p>
<p>@MaineLonghorn, apparently they know she doesn’t have an eating disorder, they just need her to gain weight because there’s a standard. Period. Although maybe those standards grew out of the concern over eating disorders.</p>
<p>@scholarme, yes she has to gain the weight nmw. The sport just makes the timing more critical so she can participate in training and the season.</p>
<p>I wonder if they are checking Vitamin D and calcium and endocrine system. These are tied to bone health. If she is losing weight then there is a deficit of rest and calories.</p>
<p>@rhandco - You likely know all about this by now, but that school was in flagrant violation of IDEA laws. Common, but tragic. Lucky your little son had a mama bear to advocate for him. </p>
<p>I agree that the school very well could cause an eating issue in their quest to prevent one. I also was petite throughout high school–5’5 and 105 lbs. Of course the dining hall took care of that and I gained the obligatory freshman fifteen. I promptly lost the weight and then some after graduation. There is a young woman who takes ballet with my daughter who is so gangly and thin that one might think she could be anorexic, until her father walks into the room. He looks exactly like her! Some people are just small, they should not be forced into unhealthy eating habits to make school officials feel better!</p>
<p>Eating disorders is one thing. If that’s their concern, they should require her to be evaluated by a mental health professional who has expertise in diagnosing disordered eating. Requiring anyone to maintain a particular BMI is ludicrous because, as you’ve already discovered, BMI was created – something like over 100 years ago, by the way – in order to measure height/weight across populations, not in individuals. It was never intended to be a way to diagnose healthy vs. unhealthy weight in individuals.</p>
<p>The thing is, requiring her to eat when she’s not hungry, to eat foods she maybe doesn’t want to eat, etc. could actually lead to her developing an eating disorder! Divorcing eating from the sensation of being hungry is not a good idea, nor is requiring someone to obsess over her exact weight and BMI the way they’re making her do.</p>
<p>If this is actually a requirement of enrollment, that’s even more crazy than if it’s about participating in sports. Is there anything else for which they require students to attain a particular physical standard in order to be enrolled? Ironically, if she actually had an eating disorder that would arguably be discrimination against someone with a medical disability.</p>
<p>I really hope you’re wrong about the BMI being a condition of remaining enrolled. But if it is you should find out if there is also an upper limit of BMI beyond which they won’t enroll students, and if not, why not? And if there is, get the Health At Every Size people on your side!</p>
<p>@dustypig, I haven’t talked to the school yet so I don’t want to quote them. The message my D is getting is: “if you want to do this sport, gain this weight. Even if you don’t do this sport, gain this weight.” She’s not resisting them bc that’s not her style – she’s doing what they say. But she feels totally unheard and forced into doing something counterproductive for her life and her body. To me, it sounds like a really incoherent message. They haven’t said, “if you don’t gain this weight, you’re out” but they are saying “you have to gain this weight to stay”. I really need to hear it from them I guess.
In a million years I never could have predicted this weirdness plaguing her first year at college. </p>
<p>@AlbionGirl, actually in my research tonight I found a couple schools that do force students with a BMI of 30 to take extra phys ed classes in order to graduate. They are not kicking them out but are making an extra graduation requirement based on weight. My hunch is it would easier to fight discrimination at that end of the scale. </p>
<p>Absolutely ridiculous. This is worse than some campus requirements in which one is required to pass a swim test in order to graduate from some colleges(MIT, Columbia)</p>
<p>@cobrat, swim test is also required at same NESCAC school that is now giving my D an eating disorder. I assumed that was fairly common, silly as it is.
edit: apparently only a handful of colleges still require it: MIT, Columbia, Cornell, Notre Dame, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, Williams, W&L, Dartmouth. ‘The rest have thrown in the towel.’ Ugh. </p>
<p>That’s crazy, I was 88 pounds @5’2 in high school, I would be considered anorexia by today’s standard. I’m now has higher BMI and doctor told me to loose weight and that was 2 years ago. I was unable to loose weight so I have not come back. I’m not obese despite my BMI, I think I’m big bone and muscular. Heck even my husband was surprised that I could hold the pergola when his arms were tired.</p>
<p>I was a postdoc at MIT and used the sailboats available to students. I remember having to pass a sailing test, but not swimming! I guess I fell into a loophole, though you would think any boat user would be most at risk if they could not swim!</p>
<p>OMG. Can you name these schools? (So my D can avoid them)</p>
<p>About gaining weight for your D, as a runner I assume (and I could be wrong) that she could improve on upper body strength. Doing weight-training type stuff for her upper body could help her gain some “good weight” - denser bones and muscle. It doesn’t have to be in the gym - many simple and easy ways to try to build upper body strength within one’s regular daily routine. </p>
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