While I understand that there is value to recording and
tracking weights in infants and children and maybe even
grownups, American culture does seem awefully fixated
on it from infancy through the life cycle. There is a
BROAD range of normal, healthy weights for normal
healthy people and it is disturbing that from birth
we try to manipulate kid's food intake so that they will
all fall in the 50th percentile of some chart that doesn't
even reflect the range of sizes, etc we find in our society.
  How do we use weight as one tool among many to assess
well being? I think this is so touchy for me because I remember
so well the weigh in ritual when two of my kids were in NICUs at
birth. I didn't understand it at the time and I still don't and as
a parent I resent the overuse of weight and measures and underuse
of observation and talking with parents. I have seen this changing
somewhat
but there is a long way to go.
  Naomi Bar-Yam

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New England Complex Systems Institute
http://necsi.org
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