Parents of sons, please pay attention

We have a teenage son, and although he wasn't tall, we thought his height was within the acceptable range, so we never considered getting a bone age assessment for him. However, in the past year, he's only grown 1cm (currently 164cm), and giving him traditional growth-promoting soups didn't help much. (Don't casually give children commercial tonics or growth soups; we later learned from the doctor that they can accelerate growth plate fusion.) So, we decided to try traditional Chinese medicine for treatment. The TCM practitioner recommended a bone age check, and to our surprise, we discovered his bone age was already advanced! (He's 14 years old, but his bone age is 17, and his growth plates have already fused.) With fused growth plates, the outcome is sealed. Two major hospitals confirmed that my son will remain at his current height for life. Even if we wanted to pay for growth hormone therapy out-of-pocket, it's too late. (Growth hormone treatment is only effective before the bone age reaches 16, and the self-pay cost is considerable. You can search online; a colleague mentioned her friend's child received government-subsidized growth hormone treatment, and the doctor said if they had come for an assessment any later, he wouldn't have qualified due to exceeding the index.) Thinking about my son having to live his life at 164cm makes me sad. Therefore, I want to remind all parents with sons: 1. Don't give them random tonics. (They can induce precocious puberty and cause premature growth plate fusion.) 2. If your child is shorter than average, don't wait to see if they'll grow in middle or high school. Get a bone age check as soon as possible and consult a doctor on how to improve their growth.