The physical growth of infants is remarkable. They usually double their weight in the 1st 4 to 5 months of life and triple their weight by the 1st year. The average baby’s height increases by 50% by the end of the 1st year.
At birth, a child’s head size is already nearly 60% of its adult size. By age 3, the head will be nearly 90% of its adult size. But these are just average gains. There are wide variations that are normal.
Except in cases of rare diseases, physical growth is determined by proper nutrition and heredity. Proper nutrition begins during pregnancy and continues throughout infancy, childhood and adult life. The measure of growth that’s most sensitive to nutrition is weight.
Children largely make up their own minds about when and what to eat. There are periods when children will refuse to eat a great deal of food. Remember that if your child won’t eat carrots or spinach for a day or so, it won’t have an effect on his or her weight.
Most parents are concerned by their children’s eating habits. Indeed, it is found that all children at some point seem to eat too much or too little and not enough of the right kinds of foods. It’s hard for children really to eat to little and not enough of the right kinds of foods.
Hunger cravings are biological, and the survival instinct strong. Normal children always eat enough. More often the problem is that children eat too much. A child in the 1st year who eats too much gets chubby and undergoes several invisible changes.
An excess number of fat cells may develop within their bodies. According to 1 theory, once these fat cells have multiplied, they send out messages that help determine appetite cravings. Although losing weight in the future will decrease the size of these fat cells, their number will be the same.
Excessive eating also can stretch the size of the stomach. Because hunger pains occur when the walls of the stomach contract against one another, stretched stomachs require more food to decrease that empty feeling.
Other factors appear to determine eating patterns. For example, thin people seem to be able to tell precisely when they have had enough food and won’t eat anymore.
Recent studies have documented that some obesity is due to a gene responsible for continued eating even beyond the point when hunger is satisfied. Children learn eating patterns from their parents and proper weight is partly culturally determined.
In some countries being heavy is considered a sign of prosperity and the same holds true for some subcultures in the US. A wide range of weights must be considered normal.
