Large height difference in adult children- why?

[Lemonsareforlife]

Name changed as kids know I'm always on MN

I have 2 sons.
I'm 5 8 and DP is 5 11
One son was 6 feet tall at 15. He's now 20 and 6 feet one, size 11feet
The 18 year old is 5 feet 5 with size 5 feet. He has barely grown in years.
Same diet etc,

I can only think that he had an operation on undescended testicles at 9. I have HUGE guilt for not spotting this issue before.

Will DS ever grow? Have we left it too late?
DS is very very reserved and will not speak.
It's short for an adult man.

Maybe the op did something?

My dds are 10 and 7 and almost exactly the same height and same shoe size. Dd2 is 95th percentile for height dd1 is 0.2 percentile. Think it's just down to genetics dd1 has coeliac disease and so was poorly for first 5 years until diagnosed. But she has grown super slowly since, dd2 never stops, can almost watch her grow at the minute!

Isn’t it true that a son will always be taller than his mother?

No. It is not true.

Were you ill when you were pregnant with him?

I've got five children. My DDs show the greatest variation in height, middle and younger are 5'6 and 5'10 respectively, with DD1 barely scraping 5'. I was very poorly when I was pregnant with her and she was born at 5lbs 2oz, when the other two were around the 8lb mark.

She caught up quickly and was a normal weight and height as a child, but just seemed to stop growing earlier than her siblings.

Yuri gagarin was 5'2 and look what he acheived.

@BalloonSlayer

They say that a boy will always be taller than his mother, so if you are 5'8" I would be thinking that he ought to be taller.

Some people don't get that rush of hormones and growth spurt, instead for them, it's more gradual, he could be one of them and he'll get there in the end. But he is 18 . . . I would talk to the Doctors and sooner rather than later as there will come a point when it's too late.

My father (over 6 foot) was shorter than his father and my ex was shorter than his father (5 ft 10 and 5 ft 8). My DSs are taller (both over 6 foot) than both of them were.

My mum is 5ft 5 and my dad is 6ft2. Both slim.

Im 5ft 8, size 18 with size 7 feet. My sister is 5ft3 a size 6-8 and has size 3 feet.
I have blonde hair and blue eyes and she has light brown hair green eyes.
I am quite calm and an academic whilst she is a hot head who didn't even finish her GCSEs.

We certainly have the same parents we are just very different. Genetics is like a dice it rolls different sometimes. Dont beat yourself up OP.

Hairy legs and armpits? Sounds as if he's a late bloomer if he doesn't really need to shave yet.

That said if he has friends and is happy being a geek be happy for him! (Mother of a 5'6 19 yo geek here!).

My Mum was 5.10, her Father 6.0, her Mother 5.2
Dad was 5.8. His Dad 5.8, his Mum 5.9

I am one of 5.
DB1 6.3
DB2 6.0
Me 5.2
DB3 6.4
DB4 6.2

We took after my Mums side in heights. All the males that died are at least 6ft. I am the same shape and height as my Maternal Grandmother.
Three of us look like maternal family facially. Other two are the spit of my Dad.

My DS is only 5.9, the same height as his own father.

@seenbeansbean I was talking about mothers, not fathers.

But someone has said that's not true anyway.

All the women (except me) are tiny in our family - the tallest one other than me is 5 ft 4, the rest are 4 ft 8-5 foot 2 so it'd be hard for the men not to be taller.

DH is 5 ft 9. His brother is 6ft 4. They have both just taken after different sides of the family. I think it might up bring a similar gap with our two boys. DH is very self assured so not an issue.

My husband's brothers range from 5'7" to 6' 4". I'm just under 6', as are my sisters, yet my daughter has stopped at 5'6". Don't blame yourself: genes are a funny thing.

My Dad at 5ft 10 is the tallest of his siblings. My Mother is 5ft 4 with size 7 feet. My Dad's side were short and fat, my Mother's side tall and thin.

I got a mixture of short (4ft 11 3/4 inches), and thin genes, not so thin now though and my feet at size 4.

My sister younger by 2 years is 5ft 5 inches, size 8 feet. Whereas she's not fat she wasn't as skinny as I was as a child. She just looks normal, I'm what you would call dumpy.

@lottiegarbanzo i was wondeting about that
Like if sophie dahl and jamie callum had a son i would not even think it 'had' to be true.

Is that an old wive',,s tale then?

When i went to a school reunion though @Lemonsareforlife a lot of the boys / men id remembered as being small werent small anymore.

Anyway..... my brother is short and seems happy with his life and his lot.

You do read comments on here about short men that'd take yr breath away but most people dont view life like that.

My DH is youngest of 6 siblings.. .he is a giant compared to all of them. And the only one with brown hair and brown eyes come to think of it🤔

@Winneralla yes. It is unusual for a son to be shorter than his mother but it happens.

I explained it upthread, so please excuse me quoting myself, with a few edits but here goes:

Each parent passes on a set of height genes (you could imagine ten genes each), that are a sub-set of their own mixture of height genes. The parents' genes could be very wide-ranging (some v.small, some v.tall), or quite homogenous (all medium). You can't know this by looking at the medium-height parent. Most likely, a child will receive a mix of each parents' taller, medium and shorter genes. Less commonly a child will receive all the mother's 'small genes' and all the father's 'small genes'. This could easily result in a short man, who is shorter than a medium-height woman (her height being an average of small and tall genes).

That's just the reason related to height genes of course. If the son has a condition that tends to make people shorter than average e.g. Downs, or experiences a developmental or environmental problem (e.g. disease, starvation) that means their phenotype doesn't match their genotype's potential, then those could be other reasons.

R4s 'More or Less' covered this and its statistical probability a few years ago. As I recall, boys shorter than both parents are much less common than girls taller than both parents.

...Then there are the stats on men bringing up children who they believe are theirs but who are not.

It just happens sometimes. My brothers are both 5'10. I'm 5'3. My sister is 6'.

All 4 of my (younger than me) sisters are between 5"9 and 5"11, I am a mere 5"2.

Should add, our mother is 5"10 and our father is 5"6

There is over a foot difference in height between DH and his brother! DH is unusually short though (shorter than your DS)
Our DD is very tall for her age and will definitely be taller than her dad before she finishes primary school.
Being short used to bother DH a bit when he was a teenager and he would have given anything to be even as tall as your DS. But after his 20s he became more circumspect about it all, and he embraces it as an unusual quirk now that stands him out from the crowd

I doubt it would be the operation. My son had the same one - oldest son - and he is normal height same as his father 5 foot 10.

Have at their weights at birth as I think doctors say that often predicts adult height - it works for us - baby no. 1 was the smallest (common first babies) and the only one who is my height 5 foot 5 or there about or 4.5 (first daughter) - others are taller.

Height is weird in my family. My Dad has got two brothers and a sister and all my cousins are tall, including the girls. I’m a short arse at 4ft 11 I’m the eldest of five I’ve got three younger sisters and a brother (who is also the youngest). If we stand in a line in age order each one of us is taller than the last, so I’m the oldest and shortest and my brother the youngest and tallest. Funny things genes.

I don't think weight at birth is a good indicator judging by my family. Heaviest shortest!