Catching Up on Lost Growth: My 2 Month Plan to Increase Height & Weight of my Child

The height of my son had become a cause of growing concern for me. Upon further observation, I found that he was not only shorter than other kids his age, he was also less active. The 2 year old plump boy with red cheeks and never-ending energy had turned into a tired 5 year old with lifeless cheeks. And everyone around us – family and friends – would repeat the same thing. My son had lost weight too!

I decided it was time for some serious action and put together a plan . This summer vacation saw extra efforts for a change in our kids’ lifestyles and we were amply rewarded. Here is my action plan for increasing the height and weight of my son, during the 2 month long summer vacations. It involves 2 main parts – Exercise for Increasing Height and Nutrition to Improve Health and enable the increased exercise routine.

1. Morning Exercises

This was totally up to me to undertake. I dragged my son every morning to our terrace and made a morning Yoga and stretching schedule for him. I incorporated a 15 minute session including:

• Basic stretches
• Standing Asanas like Tadasan (Mountain Pose), Vrikshasan (Tree Pose) and others like Dhanurasana. You can see more asanas.

In addition to Yoga, I try to encourage him to try out hanging exercises wherever and whenever possible. These are mostly possible in play parks where they often have bars to hang from. As a child, he used to hang from the wash basin but I naturally cannot let him do that now. He will more likely pull out the entire thing from the wall!

During the hot summer days, when the kids were trapped indoors, I tried to make things more active by getting him an indoor basketball.

2. Evening Sports

My husband and I, as parents, are not new to the Kids Sports scene. But the arrival of our third baby had changed our priorities and my second born, that is my son, suffered from this. He did not get a chance to enjoy the benefits of organized sports. It was high time we changed this. We decided to use up his evenings in a more constructive manner. His TV time definitely needed some curtailing. What better way that to make him join a sports class.

We wanted to enroll him for Badminton along with his sister since my daughter is already actively involved in the game. But we were advised by the Badminton coach that 5 year olds (and their limbs) are not yet ready for racket sports. We enrolled him for skating instead.

At first, I wondered how skating would help him with his height, but my concern was needless. No matter which sport you enroll your kids for, it involves a general fitness session which in itself is what the child needs to catch up on lost growth. Before he began his skating, he was required to run approx. 1.5 km and followed that with more stretching, jumps, jumping jacks and other exercises. Every day, he would exercise for about 45 minutes and then skate for another 45 minutes.

3. Nutrition

The Sports session improved his hunger decidedly. He was so hungry when he came back, that gone were his ways of picky eating. He stopped fussing about his food and began to eat heartily. But his body now needed more and proper nutrition. I did my best to remove all junk food and artificial sugar from his diet and replace them with healthy options.

Most improper snacking, I realized, occurred between meals and during the evening snacking. His sugary cereals were replaced with muesli, granola and fresh fruit smoothies. I tried to increase the protein and vitamins in his vegetarian diet with paneer (which was very welcome to him), mixed vegetables, mushrooms, spinach, rajma, soybean (curry made using the nuggets) etc. I also insisted upon larger portions of ‘daal’ and made him empty the bowl of daal.

One thing that I still fail in, is to make him eat raw veggies. I simply cannot make him appreciate salads. Still working on it, and a long way to go from the looks of it!

4. Milk

We also cut out on a lot of junk food and increased his milk intake. Earlier, he used to drink milk only in the mornings. Now, we increased the helpings by adding a glass of milk to his bedtime routine and a cup of milk to his evening snack. Now we all know that plain milk alone is not capable of fulfilling the requirements of growing kids. In order to ensure that the calcium of the milk is assimilated in the body along with other minerals ad amino acids, I recommend adding nutritional supplements to their milk. There are plenty of them available in the market an depending upon your needs and your kids’ tastes, you can choose one. Some like Horlicks Growth Plus are specially created to cater to the exact need of catching up on lost growth of kids.

No matter which one you choose, it is always better to go for milk+nutrition powders than choosing sugary drinks to provide instant energy to your kids. The so called ‘fruit juices’ and ‘sports drinks’ are filled with junk and sugar and only provide instant energy. In the long run, they provide zero nutrition and should be avoided rather than endorsed.

5. Multivitamins

Sadly, the grains and vegetables we eat today, are not of the same quality as they used to be. The commercialized farming practices have affected their nutritional value. Thus, it becomes necessary to supplement our kids’ diet with multivitamins. There can also be other reasons why your child might need multivitamins. This article on ‘Do Healthy Kids Need Multivitamins‘ explains it all. We took my son to see her pediatrician and she recommended some iron and multivitamin supplements in the form of syrups. I now give these to my son without fail.

As a result of these new habits and more healthy and active lifestyle, I am seeing a marked difference in his health. While I did not remember to note down his before and after height, I have the favorite methods used by moms to ascertain that he has grown in height. Since I am sure all moms identify with these methods, I am going to take some liberties with you and write down my observations.

1. His clothes don’t fit him! I just got him 4 new ‘superhero’ tees 🙂 All moms know that happy feeling!
2. He is able to reach the button that is used to call the elevator.
3. Inside the elevator, he can now reach the button for the ‘7th floor’.
4. He can brush his teeth without using a step-stool to elevate him.
5. And finally, he can, using his step-stool, switch on the fan.

All these things, he could not do before so he has definitely grown. Moreover, he was able to take his first full days at school very well. I was afraid he would fall asleep during the long school hours since he was only used to the half-day school in pre-primary. Apparently, all these changes have increased his stamina and his spirits both.