FREE ESSAY ON MY SON IS HAVING A GROWTH PROBLEM

MY SON IS HAVING A GROWTH PROBLEM

My assigned lot in life is that of the mother of 
a fifteen-year-old son. My son has not yet gone 
through the growth spurt that always accompanies 
adolescence.
I can imagine that as my son, I would feel 
extremely self-conscious at all times. Speaking from 
experience, it's hard to be so different than all your 
classmates are. Many high-school students dislike 
having distinguishing features that set them apart 
from the rest, such as being short. These features 
can be the basis for a lot of teasing and humiliation.
Being a female, I don't have any first-hand 
experience dealing with a male's perspective, but I 
would think it would be even harder to be a short boy. 
Males in our society are stereotypically strong and 
muscular. Rarely do we see couples in which the wife 
is taller than the husband. My son must feel 
humiliated by his peers because he does not fit the 
masculine mold.
Teenagers are very impressionable. They are 
still trying to form their own identity, separate from 
that of their parents. Most adolescents want to be a 
person that everyone else likes and accepts, and some 
will take drastic measures to be just that. It could 
get to a point where my son would try to take some 
sort of growth supplement from the back cover of a 
magazine, which would not be a healthy idea. 
Teenagers often have such a burning desire to fit in 
that they hate themselves when they cannot. I say all 
of this from experience, currently going through the 
best years of my life right now.
The thing to remember, though, is that everyone 
grows at a different rate, and not everyone is truly 
laughing at you. This information will be extremely 
hard for my son to believe, because I as a teenager 
myself still don't get it. When you walk into a room, 
it is impossible for everyone to be staring at you and 
laughing about your appearance, because they are too 
worried about themselves! Teenagers don't often 
realize that many of their peers feel just as 
uncomfortable in their own skin as they do.
For my role as a mother, I think I need to be as 
supportive as possible. It can be a very detrimental 
thing for a teenager to feel like he doesn't belong 
anywhere and that no one likes him, leading to drugs, 
alcohol, even death. I need to find out what my son 
needs and do my best to provide it for him, without 
turning him into a spoiled child. The best thing for 
a person who is upset is a loving, caring individual 
who supports him.
However, none of this support can be shown in 
public. Adolescence is the time of natural separation 
from one's parents, a time when parents begin to be 
uncool and embarrassing. To show any sort of 
affection in front of his friends would make my son 
feel even worse. This would only be yet another thing 
that would set him apart from his peers (or at least 
he would think so). 
Overall, the fact that my son has not yet 
received his growth spurt will probably be viewed as a 
negative thing. He will be unhappy and teased by his 
friends for not appearing masculine, and this could 
lead to disastrous results. To prevent any of these 
happenings, I will try to be a loving, caring, 
supportive parent, although not in public, for I feel 
that would simply make it worse. The situation, 
however, could turn out to be very positive. When all 
of his friends have stopped growing, my son may shoot 
up past every one of them. We will not know how this 
turns out, however, for at least a few years, at which 
point it will probably be less of a problem. As a 
poster I once saw states (paraphrased), The problem, 
once solved, is simple.