By: Parul Malhotra
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My Journey of Growth Monitoring with a Growth Chart

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“Can I have cheese sandwiches please?” This is the only line I get to hear when I ask my daughter about the breakfast she wishes to have. While I am happy to prepare the same for her, I also strongly oppose having it every day. A balanced and nutritional diet has a vital role to play in these growing years of our child’s life. But for picky eaters like my daughter, having to achieve this is a task in itself. 

We are often worried about the health and growth of our child. From their height to their weight, we keep an eye on everything. We all want our children to grow as per their age and I am no different. Having faced numerous comments for my petite figure all my childhood, I honestly didn’t want the same to happen to my daughter. Hence, the focus on her healthy growth was always there.  

One of the most common reasons for an incomplete nutritional diet is our focus on some nutrients while we tend to ignore the others. While every year of a child’s life is precious, when it comes to the development and growth, the initial six years of their life are crucial. This is exactly why I decided to go on a 90-day journey with PediaSure to monitor my daughter’s development and growth for it is the #FirstStepToGrowRight’ isn’t it?

While growth implies physical size of the body, development implies the overall skill and functional development. With a simple and an easy step, this 90-day journey with PediaSure helps map a nutritious diet for my child to ensure their overall development. How? PediaSure introduced a Grow Right Tracker to keep a track of children’s growth. Typing in the details such as height, weight, gender and age will give you a downloadable report. You can either use these insights to craft a diet plan or take your doctor’s help to go about it.

So, let me start from the very beginning. 
My daughter was 4.11 years old, weighing 19.5 kg, when I started with this program. She, being a bit choosy about her food, had troubled me a lot while eating which was quite evident by her petite figure. Amidst all this, I didn’t know how to keep a check on their growth.  

About the Growth Chart

While the growth curve of kids in India might not be a very usual thing, there are countries like Japan, where every kid undergoes a test (sponsored by the govt.) to track their growth curve. Growth assessment is the single most useful tool for defining the health and nutritional status of a child. 

Growth charts are used to compare the child’s height & weight against children of the same age. I honestly never understood the importance of the growth curve until I used it for my little one basis, a friend’s recommendation. Monitoring the growth through the curve not just helps you understand the nutritional needs of your kid but also helps you understand the areas you need to work on. And when you, as parents, understand everything behind the parameters of growth, it becomes easy to map the diet of the child as per his/her requirement. 

The Grow Right Tracker that I began using has been of great support. While PediaSure fulfilled her nutritional needs (that lacked due to her poor diet), the growth curve helped me understand the difference. As I mentioned in the beginning, this 90- day journey that I have begun looks very promising and I plan to continue mapping her growth regularly. I never knew keeping track of growth in this scientific way can have such an impact on overall nutrition and health. Tell me your experience monitoring your children’s growth, I would love to hear it.

The opinions expressed in this post are the personal views of the author. They do not reflect the views of any brand. Any omissions or errors at the author’s end does not assume any liability or responsibility on any party mentioned in the blog.