Anyone know how accurate adult height predictors are on kids??

[Newbie887]

As a bit of fun I filled out some adult height predictors for my kids over the weekend. They asked for child’s age, height, weight, mums height and dad’s height. My eldest son is predicted 6ft 7…!

daughter predicted 5ft 7 and younger son 6ft.

just wondering if anyone did these on their children when they were younger and how they actually compared to adult height? My children are 5-9 yrs old

Yes, accurate for both of mine who are the same height as me at 5’9

DS predicted to be 6'4".
He's 6'3" at 16.5, I think he's done list of his growing, although DM does like to remind me that DBro was still growing at 20,

DD predicted 5'9".
She's 5'7" ish now at 13.5, but I think she's stopped growing. Her feet certainly have. The old wives rule of thumb is that girls stop growing 2 years after they get their period, and she is older than that now.

Dr gave me another way of working it out, not sure Ive still got it

anyway, it was right about 2 of mine and not correct (yet) about the third

Children cannot be half their height at age 2 (well no more than some will happen to be by chance, I mean for it to be a significant trend) as boys at age 2 are not noticeably different in size to girls, yet men and women are different sizes.

A mid-parent mean plus/minus a set amount according to sex is quite a good measure, but there are loads of factors to consider - particularly puberty. I've known a few people have their children's growth investigated and it tends to come up that mum or dad was tiny when younger but did their growing later.

The bone scans they do to investigate growth problems are a good indicator.

Of all my DD's friends, all those who were tall for their age by end of primary stopped having growth spurts in secondary and their heights have stopped roughly around their mums' heights. They could still put on another few inches but it has really levelled off.

I was predicted 5 foot and I’m 5’8. Not sure about my husband but I do remember his mum telling me he was tiny up until year 9 then shot up- 6’3 now. We both started small then had growth spurts early teens.

My son is predicted 6’6 and my daughter 5’2, taking both with a large pinch of salt!

Spot on, same height predicted and he’s still growing.

It really seems to be a total mixed bag.
We had a go at this a while back. The site we used was quite good because it had a couple of different methods on one page, and it was funny to see them give different predictions. I think this was it:here
One method gave our son 6'1" and another said 6'4"! Just confirms what everyone's saying here, really. We've decided to just take it with a massive pinch of salt and have a bit of fun with it.

My dad is 6ft 6 and has struggled with his back his entire life. My DS is 13 and already 6ft 1! So he is taking after his GD. DP is 6ft 2 and I am 6ft so the DC were always going to be tall

Ithink it’s getting more normal nowadays. I meet teenage girls who are 6 ft plus and teenage boys that seem a good 6 and a half foot already. I think we associate being very tall with poor health as some genetic conditions cause extra height/ health implications. However there’s a difference between that and the generational height increases that’s leading to taller teens.

Ithink it’s getting more normal nowadays. I meet teenage girls who are 6 ft plus and teenage boys that seem a good 6 and a half foot already.

It's definitely not normal for girls to be over 6ft...

Back in 1998 DD1 was predicted to get to 5ft 10 (180cm) at my 20-week anomaly scan, based on the length of her shinbone. I wasn‘t in the UK; scans here are carried out by skilled obstetricians (I was at a specialist practice for detecting anomalies) rather than sonographers so he probably knew what he was talking about. It was a remarkably accurate prediction, almost to the centimetre. Her younger sister is much shorter so a prediction purely based on parental height would have been way out.

However there’s a difference between that and the generational height increases that’s leading to taller teens.

UK teenagers are not getting much taller though?

I found doubling their height at 2 pretty accurate

I’m just under 5’10” and DH almost 6’5”. The charts said our boys could be up to 6’10”!
My 21yo is now 6’3” and the 17yo 6’2” thankfully nowhere near the top end!

Dd1 is 17 and prediction was 5’6” (I’m 5’4”). She’s currently 5’9”!

Amazing how many Mumsnetters have children in the top statistical 1% of heights!

Amazing how many Mumsnetters have children in the top statistical 1% of heights!

They are usually all stunning too. And writing at 6 months, composing at 1 & painting like an artist at 2, free reader at 3, etc.

I suspect people with tall children are specifically responding because it’s a question from someone whose child is predicted to be tall. Self selecting audience.

DS ended up 5ft 8ins, was predicted 5ft 11ins, but he was 2 weeks overdue so perhaps that makes it less accurate. He also had a slightly early puberty so grew quickly then stopped.

Total guesswork usually. My eldest is 6’5” - his DF was 5’10” and I am 5’8”. Second son is 6’2” same as his DF.

Just anecdata but I know 3 teenage girls who are over 6 ft. I’m 5 11 myself so it’s just a smidge taller than me. My soon to be 15 yo DS is over 6ft and is nowhere near the tallest in his year. He is at the taller end thoughand I suspect that’s part of why I have leggy teenage girls hanging around. There are boys who are nearly a foot shorter than him in the same year.

I think on average people have gotten taller, I got the you’re very tall a lot in The 90s and had to buy trousers from long tall sally. Now I’d say the very tall end of the height spectrum is probably 3/4” taller and I can buy trousers from Tesco.

It doesn’t say tall in the title though, just whether the height predictor was accurate or not. This whole website seems to be a statistical rarity in that everyone has 6 foot children and 7 foot husbands, and all babies over 9lb.

Why would people lie about something they literally cannot control?

Well it wouldn’t worry me at all as the prediction is not very accurate. Just wait and see what happens.