The height of a person depends upon many factors such as the genetics, the nutrition that he receives during his growth years as well as the growth hormones that are produced in his body. Insufficiency in any of these can result in stunted or abnormal growth.
As a parent, there is not much you can do about the genetics that you passed down to your children. However, you can help your child achieve his potential to grow. Let’s look at how to make kids taller:
Making Sure They Get Proper Nutrition
When looking for ways on how to make kids taller, providing them with proper nutrition during their growth years should be at the top of your list. Proper nutrition for children means proper overall development including their height. With the help of proper nutrition, even children of short parents can get a couple of inches taller than their parents. Let’s look at some steps to ensure that your children get the proper nutrition that they require:
- Research: Research on how to make kids taller so that you can know which food you should feed your children, and which food your children need to avoid, to support their growing stature. The research can be as easy as looking it up online on a reliable website. Alternatively, you can talk to a pediatrician as well.
- Eat Healthy Foods: Once you are armed with the correct knowledge about the types of food that a growing child should eat, inculcate the food in your daily cooking. Do not expect your child to eat them if you aren’t doing it yourself.
- Make a Meal Plan: To ensure that your kids are getting the necessary nutrition, it is important that you prepare a meal plan well in advance so that you can have a better understanding of how, when, and which food items should be given to them. This will also ensure that your kids do not get bored of the meal routine.
- Prepare a Balanced Meal: Ensure that the meal is balanced. It should not be filled with only a few certain types of nutrients while ignoring the others. Each balanced meal must have all the five nutrients in them: proteins, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins as well as healthy fats.
- Hydrating: If you want to know how to make kids taller, you should not underestimate the importance of keeping the kids hydrated. Encourage your kids to form a habit of drinking more liquids, such as water, juices, energy drinks or even fruits and vegetables with high water content, so that they are hydrated throughout the day.
The minimum drinking requirements for boys is 10 cups every day when they are between 9 and 13 years old and 14 cups every day when they are between 14 to 18 years old. Similarly, the minimum drinking requirements for girls is 8 cups every day when they are between 9 and 13 years old and 11 cups when they are between 14 and 18 years old.
- Avoiding Unhealthy Choices: In a world where unhealthy foods are in abundance, it is important that you encourage your children to choose healthy foods. You can do so by setting an example yourself. It does not need to be a major step, you can make small changes in your routine life, For example,
- a) Instead of having normal pasta, substitute it with whole grain pasta.
- b) You can also stock up on healthy snacking options such as nuts and seeds rather than chips and candies.
- c) Try to give your children more and more homemade food rather than fast foods.
- d) When going out to eat, choose restaurants which provide healthier options than the rest.
- Talk to a Pediatrician: In addition to providing your children with good nutrition, you need to track their growth. Make a chart to do so and measure their growth, in terms of height and weight, every three to four months. This will help you get a proper idea on the growth rate of your children and any sudden abnormalities. Talk to a pediatrician if needed. The pediatrician would prescribe vitamins and mineral supplement to your children, in case they are not growing as much as they should. It should be noted, that you should not give such supplements or over-the-counter supplements to your children without consulting with a pediatrician.
Keep in mind that kids can grow only till they reach the end of puberty. Thereafter, no amount of proper nutrition, supplements or any method short of surgically stretching their bones, will help them grow. Moreover, it is better to support and boost the natural growth of the children by giving them a proper diet and encouraging physical activities rather than giving them pills or powders to boost their height, irrespective of how harmless these products claim to be. In addition to boosting your children’s growth, these methods help you to maintain a healthy lifestyle.