"He's always been on the 99th centile"

[StickerPlace]

I'm in a bad mood this morning. So I may we'll BU.

But I've seen this twice today. (Granted was on the same thread about child size)

But I feel like I've read/heard that comment so many times. But it can't be true?

Or are the 1% of parents with 99% children very keen to talk about that?

(FWIW just weighed/measured mine for new dance uniform as had a growth spurt and nothing fits and 11th centile.)

my eldest son was consistently on the 99.6th centile and then went above it but still followed the line if you see what i mean.
He's an adult now and 6 foot 8.

My eldest has always been on the 50th. I have never, ever felt the need to post that though, same with my middle one on the 75th and the youngest on the 91st. It’s just not comment-worthy. So that’s 3/100 accounted for.

Hmmmm. Hesitant to say this now but my DS has always been above 99th centile for height, and 91zt for weight. The reason i seem to say it a lot is because people are always asking me if he is really only 4 because he's so tall.

My dd was off the chart for length at birth and followed that trajectory.
She is 15 and 5'11"

I don't really understand your angst around children being on the 99th centile.

I don’t even know what centile my boy is, I don’t think I’ve ever been told 🤣 I expect it would be a 90-something.
I guess it’s one of those things that you don’t mention unless it’s very high or very low, so you just notice it mentioned more iyswim?

They only seem to have certain centiles, or certainly lines on the graph for them. So everyone who is big is told 91 or 99, then either 75, 50, 25 or 3. Rarely in between.

@Whatafielddayfortheheat

Hmmmm. Hesitant to say this now but my DS has always been above 99th centile for height, and 91zt for weight. The reason i seem to say it a lot is because people are always asking me if he is really only 4 because he's so tall.

Yeah, mine are older now but I remember saying this a lot to try and justify their ages.

Same with my DD.

She’s tall.

—And don’t mention her feet—

Aren't the comments relevant to the discussion, or are people randomly telling you their children's percentiles? I've mentioned my DS being off the charts for example in car seat discussions, where people look for car seats for tall children, or similar. If your child is average then that usually does not need to be specifically pointed out.

Why couldn’t it be true? Some people are a lot taller than other people. Their kids are very likely to be consistently taller than their peers throughout their lives. Class photos often have the same few kids towering above others on the back row year after year.

It can all go a bit awry when they start hitting puberty as the growth spurts associated with that all depend rather on when puberty kicks in.

You get asked about it a lot when you have a tall child. It's not a brag that people think your child is poorly behaved because people assume they're school age when they're only 3.

@NiceTwin

My dd was off the chart for length at birth and followed that trajectory. She is 15 and 5'11"

I don't really understand your angst around children being on the 99th centile.

Oh it's not an angst.

More a wonder if how only 1/100 people can be on 99th that it's so frequent to see people say their child is 99th.

Are the centiles wrong? Are the doctors wrong? Are the parents wrong?

Just a pointless wondering really?

But it's true that someone who's child is on the 64th won't feel the need to mention it. But 99 is more interesting.

I thought it was a MN trope that everyone's DS is 6 foot tall at 12yo and eats 7 dinners a day?

is this yet another thread to bash larger children? what does it achieve?

YABU

The reason I seem to say it a lot is because people are always asking me if he is really only 4 because he's so tall.
Another 99th centile here. This age was tricky because people had six-year-old expectations of my little four-year-old.
He's not 99th centile any more, only a few inches taller than the average man.

@Talipesmum

Why couldn’t it be true? Some people are a lot taller than other people. Their kids are very likely to be consistently taller than their peers throughout their lives. Class photos often have the same few kids towering above others on the back row year after year.

It can all go a bit awry when they start hitting puberty as the growth spurts associated with that all depend rather on when puberty kicks in.

Yes. My ds is 13 and 5ft 9/10in, having always been on the 91st Centile, but I'm not sure he will make 6ft, as he started his big growth spurt relatively young and is well into puberty - my dad stopped growing at 14.

By the way, more than 1% of parents have a child on the 99th centile, because some parents have more than one child.

Let's say there are 1000 children in a school, and on average each child has one sibling so that those children have 500 mothers, 10 children are on the 99th centile. Assuming none of those children are siblings, that's 10 mothers with a 99th centile child. 10 is 2% of 500, not 1%.

Of course in fact each child has two parents, but it works even then. Those 500 school mothers equate to 1000 school parents, and those 10 mothers of a 99th centile child equates to 20 parents. 20 is 2% of 1000.

Obviously in real life it's more complicated than that - not every couple has two kids, for a start, and there are half siblings and all sorts, but the point is that there are proportionately more parents of 99th centile kids than there are 99th centile kids.

@NiceTwin

My dd was off the chart for length at birth and followed that trajectory. She is 15 and 5'11"

I don't really understand your angst around children being on the 99th centile.

This except 15yo DS is currently about 6ft 6.

It's remarkable so I remark. DS2 and DD are average in height so I'd be unlikely to comment on a thread about tall girls for eg

@Notbeinfunnehbut

is this yet another thread to bash larger children? what does it achieve?

I think this one is about height, rather than weight, and parents being keen to boast about how tall their dc are? That's the impression I got anyway.

People only mention the outliers. The silent majority are silent.

By 14 my son was 6'4" . He didn't stop growing until he was 20.
Every single person he meets comments on it. Random strangers comment on it. Drunks in pubs make a thing of it.
Be glad your kid is smaller.

Presumably the centiles were set a few years ago, so maybe now more than 1% are above it. Depends whether you’re talking height or weight too.

The centiles are out of date, we are getting taller so yes there will be more than 1% on the 99% centile or above.

As for the person who said about bashing larger children my child who was on the 99 for height was only 50 for weight please don't make the assumption that saying that a child is on the 99 centile means they are heavier too.

My current 10yo is probably on the 99 (never actually check) she wears age 14 clothes for length but she very very much looks her age yet

I'm slightly anxious about how tall my 2yo is because people already approach him and talk to him like he's 4, it's happened twice in the last two weeks. So I probably talk about it more. Didn't really ever talk about my closer to the average height children.