Android: Resizing custom views. Parent is resized but width/height changes not passed down to child view

I am currently trying to make a game based on the old school battleship board game using android. I am kinda just messing around at the moment trying to get a feel for it and for the components that I may need to make the game.

Basically what I have at the moment in my layout xml file is the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent" >
<org.greene.battleship.BoardView
    android:id="@+id/board_view"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:clickable="true" />
    <RelativeLayout
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="fill_parent">
        <org.greene.battleship.ShipView
            android:id="@+id/ships_view"
            android:layout_width="fill_parent"
            android:layout_height="fill_parent"
            android:clickable="true" />
    </RelativeLayout>
</RelativeLayout>

I want the BoardView to only take up a certain portion of the screen i.e. the view should be size of the content that I want to create in this view. Which in this case is a 2D board. This is done by overriding the onMeasure() method from extending View. The view's width is kept the same but the height is given the same value as the width giving a perfect square.

@Override
protected void onMeasure(int widthMeasureSpec, int heightMeasureSpec){

    int parent_width = MeasureSpec.getSize(widthMeasureSpec);
    this.setMeasuredDimension(parent_width, parent_width);
    Log.d("BOARD_VIEW", "BoardView.onMeasure : width = " + this.getMeasuredWidth() + ", height = " 
            + this.getMeasuredHeight());
}

I check to see if the views dimensions have changed by overriding the views onSizeChanged() function and checking the values there.