my thin child

One of my kids is very thin. Abnormally so he is in like the 3rd percentile for his weight. He is 7 and weighs only 40lbs. I have 2 other kids and they are both meaty. My husband and I were thin as kids, but not like this. He is not strong at all. His hands are so weak that untill this year he struggled with holding a pencil, and when he was younger he was not strong enough to pull the plug in the bath tub. His toenails are thinner than paper, and grow unevenly and into his toes. His fingernails are thin also and are all riggedy almost pruney. He is smart as a whip, but he lacks in size and stregnth. He can eat all day and still be hungry. Has anyone heard of such a thing?

Oh yea, he also has this very vivid vein on the side of his face. It is like he attacked his face with a blue marker. It has been that way since he was a babe. Didnt know if that was important or not. Just never seen anything like it.

Any clues? He seems very healthy other than that.

[edit on 10-2-2006 by mrsdudara]

You did not include how much your son is eating so I am going onthe premise that his eating habits is on par with the rest of his age group.
He may have a couple of things going here some good and some bad.
He may very well have a high metabolism which is burning up the food as fast as he is getting it in. Thus his body does not have the energy / materials it's needs to grow and build itself.

He may also have an inability to process certain food items such as dairy products. This would produce the weakness as well as some of the other symptoms that you descibed such as the fingernails and toenails.

The worst possibility is something like Rickets

Which also fits many / most of the symptoms that you have described. I would suggest that you take your son to your pediatrician, explain your concerns and have the doctor perform some tests to identify what (if anything) may be wrong with your son.
Please let me know how it goes. I have some friends who suffer from Rickets so I am familiar with the deficency

I mean at 7 y/o I assume you've brought him to the doctor and asked the doctor this same question.............right? If not I think that would be a good place to start. Not being able to hold a pencil until you're seven doesn't sound right to me.

Peace

You should check a doctor, if you havent already... i don't want to scare you, but i have heard of leuchymia cases that start that way.

Yep I have talked to the Dr.s and they say he's just a little guy. He seems to be growing, they said they would be worried if he stopped growing all to gether. We noticed this past summer that he has asthma, but it was only a problem in the summer and fall. He has been fine and has not needed an inhaler for some time now. Other than that they say that is just the way he is. I am thinking about pushing it a bit more. I just hate to insist that he goes through a bunch of tests if it is for nothing. On the other hand, I have never seen anything like it. As a baby, he would not feed because he couldnt suck, he still has speech problems and is in speech class because the muscles in his mouth are so week that he couldnt make most of the sounds. It is irritating because there is so much he wants to do that he just doesnt have the stregnth for. For example, he wants to play baseball, and I went ahead and signed him up, but he barely has enough stregnth to hold up even the lightest bat. I have tried to look this up on the internet, but I have not found anything. He very rarely gets sick so there arent any immune problems thank GOD! I just dont know what could cause a child to be so weak. I have never even heard of it before.

I never heard of it either, but at least like you said there are no defense systems problems

You think he would be able to ride bike or swim to slowly start building up his strenght ?

He learned how to ride his bike over the summer. It took him a while to build up the stregnth, but he can do it now. He doesnt like to ride much because his legs start to hurt. As for swimming, hehehee he loves to swim, but since he is so skinny, he floats. It is really quite a site. He tries as hard as he can to dive down, but his tush just wont let him. I might look into that a bit more though. You could be on to something. Swimming is an excelent way to build muscle. I will look into a swimming program at our local pool. Thanks for the idea.

My pleasure... hope swimming helps