Healthy child called 'fat and obese'

Little Olivia Villella weighs what she's meant to and has been given a medical A+. But in the eyes of a child care worker, the baby is fat and obese.

When her mum Belinda studies three days a week, Olivia and her brother Luca spend time at an ABC Child Care Centre in Melbourne; that was until her big brother heard the big insult.

"Lucca stopped playing with his friends and he came up to me and he said: mum, someone said that Olivia's a fat beast," the children's mother Belinda said.

"I grabbed his assistant kinder teacher and I questioned her and she said to me: 'look I can't talk about it,'" she said.

"I said look I'd appreciate some sort of explanation as to what's gone on and she said: 'yes that comment is true, but it's not fat beast it was fat and obese.'"

"I was absolutely just shocked," she said.

Olivia weighs 9.3 kilograms, and on official charts, she's a healthy weight.

She has not tasted a morsel of junk food in her little life, and eats a monitored diet.

"When I go for the weigh-ins we always have a bit of a laugh, (the pediatrician) says that she certainly is not lacking in her weight, and that she's doing well," her mother says.

"There has never ever been any talk about, goodness maybe be could cut back on a bottle, nothing at all.

"She's certainly cuddly, but I definitely wouldn't say that she's fat at all, and by the time she starts walking, at least she's got some stores there in case she gets sick and the baby fat comes off," Belinda said.

Pediatrician Renata Stanislawski is appalled by the comments, and says Olivia is a vision of health.

"Olivia, I think, is 9.3kg in weight which puts her around the 75th percentile for her age, and I think her height is 70cm, which puts her in the 25th percentile, which is absolutely normal for a 1-month-old," she said.

Today, the centre had nothing to say but several parents at the centre vented their outrage: "These are babies; that is really ridiculous," one parent said.

Belinda immediately took her children from the centre and won't allow them to return.

But Olivia isn't the first child to be insulted because of their weight.

In Breeanna Holmes' case, she did have a legitimate weight problem.

On the scales, the three-year-old toddler was twice as heavy as others her age and weighed 38 kilograms.

Her mother and father put Breeanna on a diet after the insults started to fly, and she is now steadily loosing weight.

Psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg puts it simply in Olivia's case.

"I've got a very clear message to the childcare workers here and that is stick to what you do and don't get involved in medical issues, you don't have the skills or the knowledge; so politely shut up."

Just like Olivia's mum, he fears careless comments can trigger an avalanche later in life.

"There is a crisis in child and adolescent mental health. One in four young people are battling a mental health problem at the moment. We don't need this type of intervention early on to make the situation worse," he added.

And after hearing Belinda's story, Early Learning Childcare in Endeavour Hills has kindly offered Olivia and Lucca places at their centre.