Have You Been Keeping Track of Your Kid’s Growth, Nutrition and Behaviors? Here’s Why You Should!
Remember the early days of being a parent when your life pretty much revolved around visits to your kid’s healthcare professional? Milestone checks, height and weight measurements, the list goes on. Then as your kids grow and immunization becomes more of an annual affair, you find yourself (hopefully) making fewer trips to healthcare professionals. While that’s great, it’s always a great idea to keep a close watch on your kid’s growth and nutrition. Here’s why it’s important and how you can go about doing it.
What Kid’s Height Says About their Health
There’s a good reason that healthcare professionals regularly measure kid’s growth. Their growth is a key indicator of overall health and development. They record kid’s height and weight based on an age and gender-specific graph. This is to identify what percentile they fall under and to keep track of whether they are growing at a constant rate that is on par with what is expected of their age or gender.
When your kid’s growth trajectory differs significantly, or isn’t reaching certain milestones, it could be a sign of an underlying medical condition. It isn’t always the case, but it’s always good to be aware.
That’s why it’s important to regularly measure your kid’s growth. While your kid’s healthcare professional will take these measurements occasionally, it’s a good practice for you to regularly keep track of these measurements.
3 Simple Steps to Keep Track of Your Kid’s Growth
- Know Your Starting Point, Measure Your Kid’s Height and Weight
If your kid frequently visits a pediatrician, a stadiometer is usually used to measure height. If you don’t have access to a stadiometer, no problem. You can do it at home too! Here’s how:
- Have your kid stand fully upright with their back against the wall
- Heels should be flat on the floor, and feet should be together
- The back of your kid’s head, shoulder blades, buttocks, and heels should touch the wall
- Keep their head straight, eyes forward, chin level, and arms relaxed at the sides
To ensure that you have measured accurately, repeat the measurement three times and then take the average of the three measurements. Remember to get your kid to remove all shoes and socks and undo any hairstyles that could affect the measurement.
When you measure your kid’s growth, you’ll probably want to plot it against a growth chart to check if your kid is on track. Remember that in addition to regularly measuring your kid’s growth, it should be validated by a healthcare professional or your kid’s doctor. This helps detect and address any problems early.
If you find that your kid is significantly shorter than their classmates, growing more slowly than them, or a lot shorter than you or your spouse were at that age, it might be an indication to see your healthcare professional as well.
- Know Your Kid’s Nutrition, Keep Track of Diet
Adults may not always think too much about what, how much, and when they eat. Some may religiously keep track, while others eat a quick meal between meetings. But when it comes to kids, nutrition is key to their growth and development. It’s necessary for them to be eating a wholesome, nutritious, and balanced diet. Given your busy schedules and lifestyles, you may not be able to remember, so try to keep track of what your kids eat in ways that make sense for you. Write down in a journal or use a simple application that makes it convenient for you. This way, it will be much easier for you to have a discussion with your healthcare professional and determine if your kid is receiving all the right nutrition from the different food groups.
- Know Your Kid’s Behaviors at Mealtimes
Your kid’s mealtime behavior is just as important as what they eat. It’s always a good idea to keep a close watch on whether your kid is constantly rejecting certain food groups, under- or over-eating. This way, you can make modifications to the meals that you serve, try different methods of getting your kid to eat, or supplement their regular diet with milk with more superior formulation on catch-up growth.
If you start to notice picky eating, for example you can supplement with a milk designed for catch-up growth. Wyeth Nutrition’s MORE Superior growing-up milk for catch-up growth — the NEW ASCENDA® Kid — brings your kid’s essential micronutrient levels close to 100%, making it perfect for picky eaters who miss out on essential nutrients. It gives them the advantage they need for a healthier, happier life.
Wyeth ASCENDA® Kid is clinically proven to help deliver faster height growth in as early as 3 weeks!1 With a taste that kids love, it is the ONLY premium growth brand that has the Growth Plus Advantage–-100% dairy protein, high-quality carbohydrates like skimmed milk and lactose (no added sucrose or table sugar), and 38 essential growth and development nutrients that are easily absorbed.
Again, if you have your kid's dietary or nutritional intake information at hand, it will help when a healthcare professional evaluates your kid’s growth and development. They will have a more complete picture of what is going on with your kid, and this will help in putting together a plan to help their growth and development.
Moms, we hope that you’ve found this information useful. Remember, your kid’s height and growth are key indicators of their overall health and well-being. Get into the habit of measuring your kid and remember to discuss any concerns about your kid’s health with a healthcare professional!
1. Based on the Oral Nutritional Supplementation combined with dietary counseling promotes growth, nutritional adequacy, and is well accepted in toddlers experiencing growth concerns clinical study by Samuels et al in 2023
