Is my son's height okay? Mom reminisces on the growing up days

Everybody has certain banes that one grows up with. Somebody like me grew up with more than one. I have so many memories of my parents correcting my shortcomings through my growing years – at that time it wasn’t so pleasant to be told off in public, reprimanded and punished sometimes, all in an attempt so I grow up to be a socially and physically perfect human. I, for instance, still shudder at how my mom would hit me on my back in full public view to rectify my slouch. Having said that, today I can't stop thanking her enough.
 

My height was a cause for concern. I hung from a rod through a good part of my childhood only because my mother was of short stature and she did not want the same for me. The fact that my father was not tall either didn't really help the situation. Miraculously I grew to a respectable height. I am sure what helped, even though my mother swears that it was her pushing me to hang on that rod, play basketball and also a good nutritious high protein diet.
 

Mothers will be mothers and I went through exactly the same concerns when my boys were born. This time around, the fact that my husband stood at five and a half feet did not help. And so I turned into my mom. Despite being educated enough to know that each child is unique in his own way and comparisons are a big no-no, every time I would look at my husband, panic would strike and I would start reading up on how to work on my son’s height. I remember how my visits to the paediatrician turned out to be therapy sessions with me venting out my anxieties about my son’s height and the doctor reassuring me over and over again.
 

How tall is tall? This question tortured me for many a year. Every time I went for a parent teacher meeting, I would silently observe how my son was measuring up to the rest of the children – how short or tall he was compared to the peers. I pushed both my sons into sports. Since my mother gave credit for my height to basketball, I sent them to play basketball every morning, even as they hated the game. To make them eat a protein-rich diet, I smuggled in chicken and fish into the house (despite being a Jain), much to my husband’s disapproval.
 

I followed the growth chart and my son’s corresponding progress obsessively. The familial short stature was a huge concern and I didn't want them to suffer for a lifetime, owing to their genes. Constant check-ups at least assured me that there were no health reasons for the boys to not be tall. I started concentrating primarily on ensuring that my sons got a good nutritional diet by way of growth supplements in their milk and shakes. We didn’t have the kind of nutritional formulas that we have nowadays. These days I see moms opting for Horlick’s Growth Plus, which comes as a readymade growth supplement and contains all the essential nutrients required for growth and can even help your child catch up on lost growth. Lucky moms of today!
 

Well for me, in the years that followed – the mantra for good height was a well-balanced diet with adequate sleep and sufficient activity in the course of the day by means of exercise and sport. Ensuring that they had a strong immune system was important too, for the doctors reiterated that an illness is a huge setback as far as the growth of a child is concerned.
 

And something surely worked – maybe be it is a miracle or maybe it is good parenting or perhaps it is a combination of all of the above that my boys today stand tall at 6 feet two inches and 6 feet one inch respectively; had they been short, I would have loved them as much and they would have been as successful in their lives but let's face it, towering over others does have its advantages – confidence being one of them.