While there haven’t been any real scientific studies on the relationship between jumping and height, many Asian parents still believe that forcing their children “jump more” can make them grow taller.
Such is the case of a couple in China who encouraged their 12-year-old son to jump 1,000 times a day under the assumption that it would increase his height.
He surpassed that number as he was given a monetary reward for his jumps. Since they offered him 10 yuan ($1.45) for every 1,000 jumps, he would sometimes do 3,000 jumps to earn more money.
At 4 feet 9 inches, the unnamed boy is relatively shorter than other children his age, reports EBC News via World of Buzz. It was about a year ago when his father gave him a jump rope in an effort to improve his height with regular jumping exercises.
The boy diligently followed his parents and used the jump rope daily for a year, earning him a total of 4,000 yuan ($580). Unfortunately, his height remained the same despite all of his efforts and ended up as the shortest student in his class.
He did gain some weight, though, as he had been using the money he earned on junk food and other unhealthy snacks. In an interview with a local news platform, his parents lamented that they thought their son was going through a hard time at school because he began losing his appetite at the dinner table.
As it turns out, he was just eating snacks constantly outside the house.
“I used this method because I wanted my son to grow taller, but I didn’t expect it would make him a shorty instead,” the boy’s father was quoted as saying.
Feature Image via Nord Anglia Education
