"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.)

Dd was always very average for height and low for weight. Then aged 13 she grew 6” in 6 weeks (and had stretch marks on her legs and torso because her skin couldn’t keep up)

I read somewhere that children will grow to be double the height of when they were 2.5 years old. Which would have made Dd 5ft 5”

Dd tops 6ft 2” in heels

Indeed. I'm a 46yo women, 6'3, and still get asked if my parents stood me in a growbag (that you would use to grow tomatoes in) when I was little. It's fucking tiresome. As is the shock at how tall ds is. How is it a shock that our child is tall, when I'm 6'3 and dh is 6'4

What is the shock is that one of my uncles and his brother (not blood related) are both 6ft 3” yet their mum is 4ft 10” and their dad is 5ft 1”

No clue what centile my 6yo is on but she's painfully tall. She's also skinny so looks taller in a sort of put through a wringer way. She was a NICU baby so the underweight part we know about, the height I have no clue, im average height and her dad is short for a male. I assume she's doing her growing early and will stop early, I did the same. Tall until I was 11 and didn't grow an inch after that. Alternatively she'll continue to grow and grow until she pops through the roof like the Granny in George's marvellous medicine. It could go either way.

My son varied between 97% and 99% he's now 6 foot 5 ½

@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.

@KnobJockey people on MN might not but in real life people do! Health visitors do! Doctors do! My daughter was in between 9/25th centile for weight at 18 months, she was 9kg and had a 40 degree fever, at booking at the childrens hospital she was weighed for doses of meds to bring her fever down and the nurse, was so highly concerned about her weight, he said she needed appetite stimulants (not even licensed in the UK) and talks about getting a feeding tube were appropriate at this point and needed to be started asap! I pointed out she was following her centile and was told it’s not desirable to be so low on the charts.

Point is, yes you do get a lot of flack for having a small child. A lot.

@LimeSegment

I think I'd rather a 99 centile child than a 25 centil child which I have.

I'm fed up of people pointing out how small he is

Trust me, you definitely wouldn't. 25th centile isn't even particularly small. You would not rather hear "Whoa! He/she is massive! Geez they're big! Yikes!" ten times a day.

I think the issue I have with DS having a 6ft4 mixed race father who's built like a brick shit house, everyone can't seem to grasp why he is so small in comparison. They seem to forget he gets 50% of his DNA from me a 5ft2 petite Welsh woman 🤣

It’s because people talk about things that are issues for them and having a child on a very high percentile or a very low percentile usually comes with issues... e.g. 99th for weight but 50th for height would be an obese child whereas 99th for both weight and height wouldn’t, but instead would be a very tall child for their age. I have the opposite, a very small child who is on the 2nd percentile for height and 11th for weight, so despite being very short she is perfectly healthy. Anything in between is generally not noteworthy unless (like my dd) has one unexpected centile (head circumference is 99th despite her tiny size!)

How weird I was just thinking about this!

Everyone on MN seems to have a baby or child on the 99th centile. Which is statistically impossible 😂

Personally I think huge babies look like Chucky!

Uncles daughter, my cousin is 4ft 9”
Whilst his brothers children are all 5ft 7” and above.

The percentiles are out of date and based on global data. People in the U.K. (assuming you are in the U.K.) are taller and heavier than global averages so more likely to be on the 99th percentile. That being said my little nipper is on the 9th

@FailureToLurk

I think I'd rather a 99 centile child than a 25 centil child which I have.

I'm fed up of people pointing out how small he is, that he is younger than he is, am I not feeding him enough, surely at 7 he should be bigger 🤦🏻‍♀️

His father is 6ft4 I'm 5ft3 he's probably going to end up somewhere in the middle.

I feel your pain. Everyone with large children keep telling me how much they eat as if I'm deliberately starving my children and that's why they are short. Really annoys me, there's no virtue or achievement in being tall so I don't know why people are so proud of it.

Personally I think huge babies look like Chucky!

That's really, very rude.

I was at the 99th centile until I hit about 14 and then I stopped growing. I settled at 5’9 so taller than average but not extremely tall.

Everyone on MN seems to have a baby or child on the 99th centile. Which is statistically impossible

It isn’t statistically impossible. Mumsnet is not a random sample of people. It attracts comments from people with concerns about their child’s height/weight or who have received comments from strangers about their child’s height/weight or have health issues due to height/weight. People don’t tend to come on here and start threads to say they are very happy with their average sized child who is thriving and have no concerns about them.

My DD has always been 97% or up, I think! She was a very very squidgy EBF baby and is now an 8yo the size of a 10yo. But then I am 6ft, so hardly surprising.

This is not a boast, but sometimes it's a bit hard for parents to get their heads around - "OMG! She's 99th centile!" So they talk about it to make sense of it, not to put you down. It's not like it's an achievement or something.

@Cheekypeach

How weird I was just thinking about this!

Everyone on MN seems to have a baby or child on the 99th centile. Which is statistically impossible 😂

Personally I think huge babies look like Chucky!

Charming.

And it's not statistically impossible because a) you have no idea how many users are on MN and b) if they name change a lot it's likely that they've commented on different threads under different names about the same child.

“I think I'd rather a 99 centile child than a 25 centil child which I have.”

I’ve got one of each. Height has never been an issue for the small one. The tall one gets comments about her height a lot. Despite being a summer baby, everyone assumes she’s a September child. Expectations are higher etc.

Trust me, you definitely wouldn't. 25th centile isn't even particularly small. You would not rather hear "Whoa! He/she is massive! Geez they're big! Yikes!" ten times a day.

And actually it can be really tough for tall kids. People assume they’re older than they are and the expectations - right down to behaviour in the playground - shift correspondingly. Even in places where they know my kids’ ages (swimming, drama classes) they don’t always know the age and they get a shock when the answer to ‘so he’s what, 7, nearly 8?’ is ‘no, he’s 6 next week’ and they have to radically readjust their expectations. But in the meantime the kid’s confidence can have taken a battering for not measuring up, or being so much bigger than all their (age-appropriate) peers.

Both mine were born tall. DS2 was 99th centile for weight and off the length chat at birth. The midwife measured him because she was so fascinated by the length of him. And he was never chubby, just solid. He’s now 6, bumping along the very top of the height chart, towers over most of his peers and is pretty skinny.

His brother is also very tall (91st centile for weight at birth but a beanpole even then, and later had feeding problems and then food phobia) and tallest in the class, etc. There are upsides to being tall, but definite downsides as well.

I think because when you have a tall child people often expect them to act a lot older than they are so you end up justifying their age a lot

I think that people who have kids on that line are far more likely to comment on a thread about it.
Likewise when someone says "how much is your mortgage" or "hoe much in savings judging by responses lots have no mortgage and masses of savings. It's not representative

You want to try having the combination of 99 percentile and developmental delay.
People expecting your child to be well above their age as they look older and so expect ability to correspond. Added to the fact they're struggling to keep up with their peers anyway.

And yes,. people do comment a lot.
I think if Ds was smaller his development would be able to slip under the radar.

Also the fact that he's a boy people expect him to be super physical.

What's your problem op?
Tall people exist.

@Fizbosshoes

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

Yes I've noticed this. (All sustained by the MN chicken)

As well as everyone (or their 6'2" DH....or both) earning 100k but only buying 1 chicken with their earnings

One chicken doesn't go far in this house - 3 boys - the eldest has pretty much stopped growing at 6'2" - the youngest is just hit 5'8" and I suspect he will be the tallest.

JassyRadlett Exactly this. My 5yo is in a swim class with older children but because she’s tall it’s not that obvious she’s much younger. Her confidence took a bit of a battering as the older kids have greater strength and coordination and we’re picking up the skills quicker. I had to have a chat and say she is only 5 you know and the teacher was quite shocked. She gives her a bit more support and help now.

@Stretchandsnap

Both DDs are slim, (I’m not, I have an arse you could balance a pint on, but they are much more athletically built than me and take more after DH (6’5) I have no idea why this is controversial, it just is what it is for our family and nothing to do with breeding a super race of rowers

Its only controversial for people who don't understand statistics and like to boast about being so fabulously normal they don't need to frequent freak shops or be horribly self concious like those of us built along lankier lines.

It doesn't take many brain cells to work out that a thread on subject X will attract posters with experience of subject X.

Mine always was. He was a big long baby and now he's a tall skinny 10 year old. His dad is tall. Makes sense he will also be tall.

Unsure why it matters.