"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 have one DC on the 91st centile and one on the 3rd. They have both followed these centiles since birth and are now in their teens. There are a lot of posters on MN so yes, it’s perfectly believable that quite a few posters have children at either end of the scale. Posters who have children on the 50th centile presumably won’t feel the need to mention it very often because it will be less relevant to a discussion about very short or very tall children.

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

Not so much keen to talk about it, as have a need to. DC who fall in the middle of the bell curve don't have size-related issues. It's the outliers where issues sometimes crop up and get posted about

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

Or, are the 1% of parents far more likely to be drawn to a post about size. For example, I would assume a high number of parents with 99% kids are likely to click on your post.

Have you actually done a count of the posts you see and it comes out at more than 1% answering, or is there some cognitive bias going on. I can't recall ever seeing it said much.

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

Because when you are on the extreme ends you have actual problems which are less likely to trouble people who conform to society's expected size.

Like:

• paying VAT on shoes for children still in infant/junior classes
• not being able to buy clothes that fit (because obviously children of a fixed height are all the same width)
• VAT on clothing whilst still child age
• people complaining that your 18month old behaves like an 18 month old (I was actually told that if a child looks older they should behave older)
• constant challenges over ticket pricing well before being at threshold age

The list is endless and parents of very small children will have a comparable set of problems.

If my DC had all been average size and small feed I'd not have faced any of these size related problems to make size relevant to a question.

Do you mean 99th centile for weight, height or both?

HV won't measure length/height in my area and neither DC will stand still long enough for me to do it so I couldn't tell you their height centile. And I can't imagine people boasting about 99th weight centile?

All of my DC have been in the high 90s for height percentile, they're all really tall, eldest is 6'6 at 18.

My dd was on the 95 centile at pre birth scans and the scanner commented on her really long legs. When she was younger we simply age sized up her clothes and it was easy to buy her the same things which were popular with her friends. She is now aged 13. She is 6ft tall with size 8 feet. She is going through a difficult stage of not liking her body image much. She can't just walk into a shop and choose a pair of jeans like her mates. More often than not they don't keep the long or extra long in stock so everything has to be ordered on line. Even more disconcerting is finding that when jeans ext do arrive sometimes the longest they do are still too short. Until recently she was always perfectly happy with her height but she now doesn't want to go shopping, just at a time when her friends are starting to go locally without parents. Her mother is wisely organising lots of other things with her friends, badminton, cinema, sleep overs ext. She sends for a selection of things on line and leaves them in the bedroom without comment for dgd to try and she is getting there. She has shot up recently, even overtaking her older brother which is very hard for her. She is getting there with accepting herself and mum is handling things very wisely. Being outside 'average' size, whether small or tall, can be quite challenging, especially in the teen years. However, worse things happen at sea, as the saying goes and in the end, height is what it is. They just need a lot of support, especially when teenagers to deal with it.

It's also the case that 1% of a big number is a lot. There were 613,936 children born in England and Wales in 2020. 1% of that is 6139 children. That's just in one year. So about 6000+ children every year will be "on the 99th centile".

Commenting on a tall child's height is likely to be relevant for quite a few mumsnet discussions (car seat, behaviour expectations, nutrition, etc.), as is commenting on an "unusually" small child. People just don't talk about their average-sized child.

@GetYourEightYearOldOutOfATree

Three small and skinny children here.

I do notice that tallness is prized* and there is a bit of a tendency, here and elsewhere, to talk about tall children (esp boys) as if it were a parental achievement.

Maybe OP is responding to that?

*And smallness definitely isn't. I do enjoy the rare upsides, including the expression on people's faces at the articulate stream of language/climbing prowess of a 6yo who looks 3, or 4 at the very most)

100%

I think people who post on certain threads are self selecting.
Just like 100% of parents who don't understand SATs or CATs seem to have high performing children
and if you look across the education boards you'd be forgiven for thinking that all children either get straight 7-9s in their GCSEs, or have SEN. The average 4-6s are very under represented.

fwiw My DD is at the opposite end height wise and is 17 and just under 5ft.

This^ I can remember as a kid me and my sister (both of us small) being compared to taller cousins by relatives 'ooh, haven't they grown, they're going to be tall' they may as well have added 'whilst your two are going to be pathetic little tiny people' no no I'm not bitter about this at all

MN is completely unrepresentative of my RL. If you looked on the Secondary Education topic you'd conclude that state schools don't exist.

My tiny premie ended up on the 96th centile so it was big news for us and everyone who remembered what he looked like when he was born. Probably I was annoying but I don’t care at all.

Dgd not DD 😁

I think the percentiles may be slightly out of date tbh. Children are consistently getting taller in the west as well fed, nourished and medically well children will more likely grow better.

My child is on 10th percentile and there are definitely more children in his class that are closer to 99th than his height

For one thing, the charts for 0-2 are worldwide, so in some countries more children are going to be born at the higher centile.

My dc was born 95th centile and no that's not a boast (why would it be - what's good about being massive?), if I ever mentioned it to someone it would be by way of explanation if they thought she was older than she is.

If your dc were born perfect little petite angels on the 10th centile, that's great. Others aren't and it doesn't mean they are lying, morally lacking greedy pigs, etc. For the record, I ate healthily during the pregnancy and didn't put on much weight. Dc was born 95th centile.

I clicked on this post BECAUSE it said 99th centile. Which DD1 has never been on since birth as she's off the top in length/height. She's tall and thin (I take no pride in this - genetics and all that) and a pain to get school uniform for - the elastic waists can be uncomfortable for her as so much material is gathered.

If you'd specified bottom 1% or 25th I might not have bothered even clicking on this thread. You've created a self-fulfilling prophecy here.

It's a bit like those who assume that autism is misdiagnosed, because there are so many mothers of autistic children on mumsnet. Web forum audiences will go where the help and support is - having more threads about a particular topic on here pushes it up the Google rankings, to be found by more people looking for information on it.

@C8H10N4O2

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

Because when you are on the extreme ends you have actual problems which are less likely to trouble people who conform to society's expected size.

Like:

• paying VAT on shoes for children still in infant/junior classes
• not being able to buy clothes that fit (because obviously children of a fixed height are all the same width)
• VAT on clothing whilst still child age
• people complaining that your 18month old behaves like an 18 month old (I was actually told that if a child looks older they should behave older)
• constant challenges over ticket pricing well before being at threshold age

The list is endless and parents of very small children will have a comparable set of problems.

If my DC had all been average size and small feed I'd not have faced any of these size related problems to make size relevant to a question.

Yes to all of this.

When youngest DD was 5 a HCP complained that she was acting like a regular 5yo when she's 'clearly older than 5..' well no, look at her charts and you'll see she isn't.

I've also been told that because my children are taller than their age they should act older than their age. It mightily pisses me off. Family are just as bad. Many times had to remind people that DC are only X age and therefore acting perfectly normal for their age!!!

Pretty sure they are out of date or not representative for height. The red book centile charts show adult height predictors based on the curves and for women 5ft 9in is above the 99.6th. I’m that height and it’s not exceptionally tall for a woman at all. Definitely more than 0.4% of the population.

My first was born above the 99th centile at 11 lbs 9oz. He was an enormous baby and toddler up til about 3 but he's now a reasonably tall (91st centile I think) but skinny 7 year old so that rules me out of boasting about my 99th centile child any more.

Well my 4 cover the spectrum, one always off the scale for height but not weight, one 90 something for height and weight, two below 50 for height, one way below 50 for weight.

Maybe I balance everyone else up or I just have weird children (they all look fairly normal as adults.)

@C8H10N4O2

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

Because when you are on the extreme ends you have actual problems which are less likely to trouble people who conform to society's expected size.

Like:

• paying VAT on shoes for children still in infant/junior classes
• not being able to buy clothes that fit (because obviously children of a fixed height are all the same width)
• VAT on clothing whilst still child age
• people complaining that your 18month old behaves like an 18 month old (I was actually told that if a child looks older they should behave older)
• constant challenges over ticket pricing well before being at threshold age

The list is endless and parents of very small children will have a comparable set of problems.

If my DC had all been average size and small feed I'd not have faced any of these size related problems to make size relevant to a question.

My son at six still has no bum, all of his trousers have to be taken in at the waist, its a right pain. Thankfully he likes shorts! He’s a bit behind socially and emotionally due to early trauma, so people can be extremelt unforgiving of his behaviour, even medical professionals and sometimes staff at school. He may be the height of your average eight year old, but chronologically he is 6.5 and developmentally he is around 5.

My DC1 is on the 98th for height, we do get a lot of comments as she’s tallest in her reception class. I don’t know what she was at birth as here HVs don’t measure length so I can’t say what you have said we all say . She was born on the 25th for weight.

My other DC is on the 0.4th for height and weight though, I stress more about this tbh

I don't understand what you're asking?

DS has been above the 99th percentile since he was a baby, and I do mention it occasionally, if it's relevant.

DD is tall, but not as unusually tall as DS. I can't remember what her percentile was as an older baby or toddler (low 90s I think?) as it's less unusual. I'll say she's tall if it's relevant but I won't quote a percentile.

So maybe that's a factor. Can others with DC who aren't at either extreme remember what percentile their DC were at, beyond when they were newborns?

But also, 1 in 100 is A LOT of people. If you're engaging with chat forums where there are thousands of parents, loads of them will have DC who are at the 99th percentile.

Also, why does it annoy you? I don't understand?

On MN children are either 99th centile or 0.4centile, nothing in between. It's like you can only have children destined for Oxbridge or a life of crime.

I do have large boys (both over the 90th+ for weight and height - both had recent hospital appointments so I know for definite). That said, they're not massively larger than their peers - maybe a head taller than some, a few inches over others, shorter than a few. 4yo DS is noticeably smaller than his 6yo cousin. MN seems to have a large number of giant toddlers who dwarf primary school children.