Monitoring height and weight is also a necessary part of every child health checkup. Let your pediatrician teach you how to monitor and assess your child’s height and weight growth. “The child is growing, and height and weight are important growth indicators that parents are concerned about, and monitoring weight and height is a necessary part of every child health checkup. Some parents may say that we can do the same thing at the hospital. If the doctor doesn’t say too much to you after the checkup, it means your child is normal. If your child is of particular concern to the doctor, it may be because your child is at a stage where there is a growth problem that needs to be corrected. The growth of a child’s physique is a continuous process, and parental monitoring is often more important. If done correctly, it will identify problems in a timely manner and provide a basis for further health guidance from the child’s health care provider. So how do we monitor and assess changes in a child’s height and weight growth? First, when measuring considerations This issue seems to be very simple, some parents will say, there is a scale, a ruler can do. In fact, the first thing we need to do is to make sure that the tools we choose are accurate, to 0.01 kg for infants and to 0.1 kg for children. The measurement of height is divided into prone position and standing position, before the age of 3 years to take the prone position to measure the length, you need to use the standard infant measurement bed, this is not easy to do at home, you can also take a fixed hard ruler measurement, each time to take the same standard also has reference significance; 3 years old and above, to take the standing position, parents can put a standard height paper on the wall at home, requiring shoes off, upright, heels together, shoulders relaxed. Second, the frequency of monitoring The frequency of monitoring the child’s height and weight is related to age. For normal children under 6 months of age, the length and weight need to be monitored once a month, children between 6 months and 12 months of age should be monitored once every 2 months, between 1 year and 3 years of age once every 3 months, between 3 years and 6 years of age once every 6 months, and for children over 6 years of age once a year. If the child has some problems after birth, such as premature birth, serious diseases in the neonatal period, abnormalities in CT and other imaging examinations, etc. are classified as high-risk children, the frequency of monitoring should be one age earlier than the standard for normal children, for example, a premature baby born at 8 months still needs to be monitored once a month. The results of the measurement should be recorded on the growth curve, which is a convenient and intuitive tool for monitoring the child’s growth and development, not only to see the growth level but also the growth trend. The horizontal coordinates of the growth curve are the child’s age and the vertical coordinates can be other growth indicators such as weight, height or head circumference. The method of recording is to make a line perpendicular to the horizontal coordinate with the actual age point of the horizontal coordinate, and then make a line perpendicular to the vertical coordinate with the measured height or weight value, and trace the intersection points in the form of dots, and connect several consecutive tracing points to get the child’s growth curve. The beauty of the growth curve is that it is a continuous and dynamic observation of the child’s growth and development over time. If a measurement deviates significantly from the percentile values of other indicators, it suggests a possible abnormality. There are seven main standard deviation lines on the growth curve, -3, -2, -1, 0, +1, +2, +3 (see figure), which may be normal between any two standard deviation lines. The development of an individual child should not be taken as a mean value, and the specific interpretation should be analyzed by the child’s health care provider. IV. Significance of monitoring The monitoring of weight and height is significant in the process of child growth and development. Monitoring of height can detect short stature at an early stage, when the child’s height growth level is less than -3 standard deviations, it indicates that the child is short in stature, so that the cause of the problem can be found and the intervention can be treated. It also has a regulatory effect on the catch-up growth of premature babies and low birth weight babies. The indicators of growth and development are not only height and weight, but also head circumference, chest circumference and upper arm circumference of infants are commonly used. Monitoring is also not limited to growth rate and level, but also to proportionality and comparison of the child’s growth standards.