In the obstetrics and gynecology wards of major hospitals in Korea, every new mother learns about infant growth and development under the guidance of a doctor after the birth of her baby, and new mothers are given a handbook when they are discharged from the hospital, in which the following are relevant to “growth”.
Go to bed before 10:00 p.m. and don’t breastfeed at night. It is best for children to go to bed before 10:00 pm. Since breastfeeding can disturb your baby’s sleep, stop breastfeeding at night from 4 months of age until 8 months at the latest. In addition, if your baby goes to sleep and wakes up at a relatively regular time, forming a stable sleep cycle, the secretion of growth hormone will be prolonged.
Develop correct posture from a young age. During the growth period, the growth plate is “open”, and as it closes, the growth process of the child is gradually terminated. To prevent improper posture from affecting the development of the growth plates, mothers should always observe their children’s posture and correct it.
Sit in a chair whenever possible. Squatting on the floor to play can lead to poor blood circulation in the legs and outward bending of the bones. The best sitting position for your child is to sit in a chair and keep the back against the back of the chair, which is good for keeping the spine straight.
Avoid wearing tight clothes and socks. Clothes that are too tight will affect blood circulation, especially socks that are tight around the ankles and difficult to put on and take off, which will affect the blood circulation of the whole leg and is not conducive to the baby’s growth.
Nothing to climb a small slope. Find a 20-30 meter long ramp with a slope of about 15 degrees near your home, and take your baby to climb it more often. Such exercise is very effective in stimulating the growth plate.
Acupressure meridian point method to stimulate growth points. Stimulating the cartilaginous parts between the bones can promote growth and development. This is because stimulating these areas allows for more active transport of nutrients that form the bones, which in turn promotes bone growth.
Laugh every day and grow every day. The amount of growth hormone produced when happy is about 10% more than when unhappy. Therefore mothers should try to make their children feel happy physically and mentally by all means.
Singapore
2 hours of outdoor activities every day
In Singapore, from kindergarten onwards, children must have two hours of outdoor activities every day, rain or shine. In primary and secondary schools, sports activities are abundant. In addition to normal physical education classes, schools organize various sports interest groups, such as soccer, basketball, volleyball, running, etc. After classes in the afternoon, the interest groups start their activities, and students exercise for two hours before going home.
Japan
Children have fish for every breakfast
Since the 1950s, the Japanese have been conscious of making the food as varied as possible and ensuring the intake of silver cod at breakfast, which contains proteins such as globulin, albumin, and various amino acids in ratios very similar to those needed for children’s growth and development. At the same time, Japanese students have to drink a glass of “milk between classes” every day as a matter of course. Every morning around 10:00 a.m., children from kindergarten to junior high school all over Japan have a fresh glass of milk.
Behind almost all height increase tragedies is the lack of knowledge of parents, which directly or indirectly affects the physical growth of children, including the lack of bone age monitoring, precocious puberty, and overeating as the three sins that cause children to be short.
Differences in height may be caused by external factors
In the 1980s, Prof. Yeh Yiyin was sent to the UK to work with Tanner, the pioneer of international child growth science, to conduct research on child growth, and after returning to China, he has been engaged in research and clinical work on child growth and development for nearly 30 years. He created the “Ye’s Bone Age Scale” as a standard for detecting bone age and predicting height of children in China. Professor Ye told reporters that the international community once thought that Chinese people were short because of their ethnicity. Since the founding of New China, Chinese people have been increasing at a rate of 1.5 to 2 cm every 10 years, so the key to individual differences is the external environment of the human body.
Bone age monitoring from birth to adulthood
In foreign countries, especially in Western Europe, parents often take their children to the doctor for height; however, it is rare in China, and almost no parents know that their children need to be monitored for bone age as soon as they are born, which should be done once or twice a year and continue into adulthood. Through bone age monitoring, once a child’s growth curve is found to be downward, the cause should be found in time. Several points and periods are particularly important.
The first node is when the child is 2 years old, because this is when the first growth spurt ends, and the second node is before puberty begins, because the body is approaching its second growth spurt and bone age monitoring must be performed. Also, the two fastest growth stages are infancy (before age 2) and puberty (10-15 years), when the child grows about 30-40 cm taller before age 2 and 25-30 cm taller during puberty, and bone age monitoring must be maintained during these two periods. Finally, parents must pay attention to the growth curve of their children from birth to adulthood. The child is constantly growing, and if the growth stagnates, or if the annual growth is less than 4 cm, or if it suddenly accelerates exceptionally, it is important to find the cause. In conclusion, it is of utmost importance to monitor bone age regularly to identify problems and solve them in time.