Almighty Dad | A stay at home dad blog

I was doing my typical routine this morning where I spend a few minutes poking around the Internet looking at blogs and other parenting related websites.  I found a height calculator.  They asked me to enter my height, and my wife’s height, which I did.  It went “bleep bloop” and told me my kids are going to be 5′ 11” when they grow up.  I did it out of pure curiosity, but it’s stupid. What difference does it make how tall my kids are going to be? Am I planning on engineering a football career for them? No. Can I do anything about it?  No.  Then who cares?  Parents are always concerned that their kids are irregular in some way.  They do these tests for the same reason we keep checking the fuel gauge on the car even though we know it’s full, compulsion.  The doctor even reassures us with height and weight charts that tell us at which percentile our kids fall in terms of size.  There are indeed a few times these charts make sense, but for 99% of us it’s not even worth keeping track.  However tall our kids end up being is just how it is. We won’t love them less or give them rewards if they exceed a certain standard.  After all, they can’t do anything about it either.

Midgets

Everything is funnier with midgets, right.  Well, not for midgets it isn’t.  Some little people are perfectly happy being the height that they are.  Some though, wish they could have done something about it in their youth.  There is a chance to stretch out bones and make people taller when they are young.  In instances where dwarfism is an issue, parents might want to keep a chart so they can decide if they want to manipulate their kid’s height so they can live a more normal life.  This is clearly an example that can be eyeballed first.  It isn’t like you look at a kid and say, “hmmm, maybe he’s a dwarf.”  No, you know it right away.  Very rare case.  But, yes, legitimate.

Malnutrition

There are also cases of malnutrition where a height chart can come in handy.  If a kid is sufficiently off the charts one way or the other the doctor might ask a few questions about nutrition.  Especially large kids might even have some pituitary issue that is causing them to grow too fast.  In the case of malnutrition it might be a case of parents not being educated enough to know to feed their kid milk, eggs, meat and other high protein foods.  They might need a class or two.  But, again, these are instances that are usually quite obvious.  Size is not the only issue in these circumstances.  There are normally health problems that are of more overriding concern.  It’s also why well-baby checkups are important.

For the Rest of us 

We know when there is something unusual going on with our kids. When there is something happening we pack it up and go see a doctor.  Otherwise there are more important things in life to worry about than how tall we think our kids are going to end up being.  I’m especially bothered by people who talk about the height of their kids as if it’s a contest.  Do these parents not know that Lennie from Of Mice and Men was huge?  My kids happen to be a little on the short side for their ages.  Can I do anything about that? Of course not!  I feed them good food and they are perfectly healthy; what else could I possibly want?  My sister has three kids who are enormous.  I don’t know why, but her kids came out really big.  I’ve always thought there might be some genetic health thing going on with them.  But, the older they get the less likely that is.  They’re probably just especially large people.  Is there anything she can do to shrink them?  Nope.

The point is this: if your kid looks and acts normal then he is probably normal.  There is no need to fret over something as silly as height and weight when there is nothing that can be done about it anyway.  We are all created with certain characteristics that are going to make us into an adult that looks a certain way.  Don’t go messing with it or worry about it unless there is a good reason.  Good reasons are rare.

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