"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.)

I agree that children these days are much taller. Dd was always on 99th . Not sure if she still is , but She’s 5 ,over 4ft and in 7-8 clothes . She’s like a green bean though

i was 9ft 8in at birth but i never mention it

My daughter has followed the 91st for weight and 75th for height since birth. School have said she is over weight. 🤷‍♀️ she eats well and is super active. I'm not worried.

@KnobJockey

Well because people don't judge you when your baby/ child is on the 2nd/ 25th/ 50th centile. You can count on one hand how many threads there are bout kids at the school gate being too skinny, compared to the mountain of them about overweight kids.

I have a daughter born just short of 10lb, followed over the top tracking line for both height and weight, and she's still there now at 2.5. she's just growing out of 3-4 clothes, normally height before weight. She eats broadly a similar amount and range to others at nursery/ childminders. But people on mumsnet make you feel like you are a bad parent for genetic build. They don't do the same for those whose kids are in size 12-18 nmonths clothes at 2.5 years.

You have to be joking. You perhaps haven't noticed it because you haven't experienced it, but people make comments all the time if you are small/have small children, especially small boys. I'm 5ft0 and before I had children was size 6 weighing under 7stone. My children are short and slim - big surprise. - and I had nothing but grief over it pretty much from birth. We ended up being referred to paeds for investigations though thankfully the consultant I saw took one look at me, one look at my son and said "what were you expecting?". I opted out of HV care eventually because I was so bloody sick of being treated like a negligent mother because I had small children. My DD hasn't had too much trouble as a result of her small stature but it's a big issue for my boys. They were bullied at school and now they are teens/young adults plenty of women mock them - check out all the threads on here that mention short men's deficiencies as partners for examples. I've had to put up with not amusing and witty comments about my height for my whole life, and if being a woman wasn't already disadvantageous enough at work, being a short woman was extra crap. I lost count of the number of times people said stupid stuff like "You're too small to be a Consultant" (small people don't grow up or have brains?) and I've been referred to as a little girl etc in my 50s. I don't doubt that people at the other end of the scale get grief too, but being short definitely has negative effects and people absolutely do make rude comments.

@senua

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.

Same here. Always off the charts tall. Unfortunately being autistic and possibly ADHD too, their emotional ages are even lower than their chronological ages, so I had a daughter who looked 10, was 8 and acted 6. People can be arses about it.

My son is even taller. He's 6, looks 8 and thinks 4. I do mention their height a lot in discussing SEN because it affects how they are treated and seen.

@VikingLady that’s exactly the issue I have with my suspected ASD, very tall 3 year old.

@CoalCraft Wouldn't in real life less than 1% parents have a child on the 99th percentile? Most parents with more than one child will have all of their children on the 99th and not just one, because height is heritable. The average family in the UK has 2.4 children, so shouldn't just 0.5% of parents have a child that tall? Both my twin cousins are 6'9, both my friend's daughters are over 6'1 etc.

[quote Yolande7]@CoalCraft Wouldn't in real life less than 1% parents have a child on the 99th percentile? Most parents with more than one child will have all of their children on the 99th and not just one, because height is heritable. The average family in the UK has 2.4 children, so shouldn't just 0.5% of parents have a child that tall? Both my twin cousins are 6'9, both my friend's daughters are over 6'1 etc.[/quote]
I have one on the 25th centile, one on the 99th and one around the 50th.

*"Coalcraft

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%*

In fact the tallest children likely will be related, so the 10 children on the 99th centile will belong to fewer than 10 mothers.

Actually dd3 was always a head taller that the rest of the class added to which she had speech delays and other issues.
She has stopped growing at 14 and is 5'7", which is great.

Agree it’s definitely not fun the comments you get when they’re tall. I took dd age 14 months to a church play group and every single conversation people commented. There were lots of two year olds she was a head taller than.
Not sure about the whole women who are tall become models thing. Generally if you’re a tall woman there’s an expectation of skinniness. If you’re tall and average + build you tend to look big and awkward

@AgeingDoc I apologise, I should have worded that as people dont judge children as often or as publicly for smaller rather than larger.

If we go through the threads posted in the last week, for example, I can guarantee we can find one about kids nowadays being overweight. It's less likely to find one about underweight. Newspaper headlines are about the obesity crisis. On the last thread I read, a nursery worker (I believe) said that she always knows that those kids who are tall and sturdy (i.e. my daughter, on the centiles she's on) will almost always become obese. That height is a pre cursor to putting on weight.

It seems to me that the majority of people who comment on low centile are medical professionals, which they need to for safety reasons. I don't doubt that you do get idiotic comments as well, but I really do believe that people judge high centile children more harshly than low centile.

@Blueeyedgirl21 I’m not sure about whether people always end up with people taller, I know lots of taller women have partners shorter than them (there’s a lot of angst about it in tall forums about this topic). Also what is normal? In DD2’s class there is a another girl taller than her (gasp) 2 giant 10 year olds, in a class of 30 children… so it isn’t that unusual

@C8H10N4O2 I said to my 10 year old the other day she has reached peak shopping opportunity already - only the freak shops in her future honourable mention for Seasalt though that actually stock tall ranges in store (useful if she wants to dress like her mum!)

I think the issue is that the centile charts haven't been updated and people are growing taller. Over nutrition not only causes children to get fatter but also taller, a friend is involved in research currently which obviously takes many years (they are following children from birth).

Mine were tiny for term babies (both 5th percentile) and grew slowly, they are fairly short adults.

It’s a bit of both, isn’t it? People with children on the extreme ends of the charts in either direction are more likely to mention it (I’ve had one on each end). And also the centile charts are out of date, particularly for weight. Way more than 1% of 5 year olds are in what is marked as 99th centile for weight, for example.

Over nutrition not only causes children to get fatter but also taller, a friend is involved in research currently which obviously takes many years (they are following children from birth).

But good nutrition results in taller dc why would that automatically be over nutrition?

Besides in the UK we are not getting any taller compared to those in other EU countries. They is also evidence that poorer children are shorter due to diets.

I said to my 10 year old the other day she has reached peak shopping opportunity already - only the freak shops in her future grin honourable mention for Seasalt though that actually stock tall ranges in store (useful if she wants to dress like her mum!)

I found it much harder to get age appropriate or even just fitting clothes and shoes for the girls when teens than the boys. I have many times cursed the fact that boys' and mens' clothes come in many combos of size and width but girls and women are supposed to magically one set of dimensions.

Shoes were more difficult for the girls also. It was either made-from-paper shoes from New Look which fell apart after four wears or ridiculously overpriced shoes from expensive makes for middle aged women. Scandi and Dutch shops offered more shoes appealing to ordinary teens but post Brexit I'm not sure how easy that is.

DD just turned 11 and is in the last year of primary. She doesn't wear make up but looks and is built like a 15/16 year old. Someone had a go at her in a shop at Christmas - she was at the till paying for her sweets and messing with her phone while I popped the toddler back in his pushchair. Suddenly some bloke in the queue is having a go at her 'it's people like you who are spreading covid around think you're fucking clever breaking the rules not wearing a mask..'. Proper raised voice and right in her face. And she was mortified because she was still only 10 at this point. Of course I stepped straight in told him to back off and asked him if he was in the habit of verbally abusing 10'year old girls, to which he called me a lying c**t and there's no fucking way THAT is a 10 year old.

That's one of the nastier things that we've experienced. Mainly it's people thinking they should act older because they look older.

My son is on a very low centile for both height and weight and gets constant idiotic comments. He was fairly large at birth but has growth hormone deficiency and dropped below the lowest line by the age of 1. He was wearing 12-18 size clothes by the time he started nursery and had to have steps to help him up to the nursery sized toilets and sinks. I had constant comments! Mostly that he was adorable or some sort of extremely advanced genius as he looked a lot younger than he was. Of course I didn't mind those comments. But I was a teen mother (and looked even younger than I was too) and had lots of patronising comments about how I didn't know how to feed him properly etc. One lady suggested that the reason he was so small was because I was always picking him up and carrying him. Nope, the reason he was so small was because of his medical conditon and I was always having to carry him cos his tiny body was fucking exhausted.

He's a teenager now and the comments are disgusting. He receives treatment for his condition now so is still small but thankfully not quite so small. He's just on the bottom line now. We're very lucky that he's naturally confident and outgoing because he is constantly laughed at and mocked by other teenagers. The size of his penis is frequently questioned. I hate it when people talk about 'small man syndrome' because he's taunted on a daily basis and feels that he has to prove that he's still 'manly' even though he's small. Small man syndrome wouldn't exist if small men didn't constantly have their masculinity brought into question.

Last time I measured mine DS was around the 97.5 percentile and DDs both below 5%

And also the centile charts are out of date, particularly for weight.

The centile charts reflect the healthy range, not the overweight range.

I can’t remember which line mine were on, so much angst in that bloody red book. DD14 is 5’9 and DS15 is 6’.

Annoyed by so many mentions of children following the 99th centile, so starts post about it, leading to literally hundreds of replies with nearly all about children on the 99th centile.

I would hazard a guess that that does indeed make you highly unreasonable!

MY SON IS ON THE 99TH CENTILE. Sorry if that irks you OP.

Both my boys are and look much older than they are so I'm often saying that so people who question their ages. Also their behaviour is of their age whereas they look a year older at least so I'm often explaining that too i.e. my son doesn't really understand sharing yet but he's only just 3 whereas he could pass for 4 at least