Worried about son's height

[vitDsunshine]

12.5 DS is 143cm. Always been small. His dad is 5 ft 8, I'm 5ft 2. His dad was also v small until about 15, then shot up (well, relatively!) so quite likely, DS's trajectory is similar.

I'm just worried. What if he's tiny? Far shorter than he's dad? He's already very conscious of it and as his friends start to go through puberty, I've no doubt his self-consciousness will increase. Obviously I tell him he's amazing etc, and that we all have to love and be kind to the bodies we are given...

But I've seen some awful posts on mumsnet about women's feelings about short men - there's prejudice.

I guess I worry it will affect his happiness in life.

Please, no nasty judgments. I'm just expressing fears I can't share IRL.

Most men don't marry supermodels unless they're fabulously wealthy. I doubt your average 6footer would have a look in either.

The "limiting" word is useful to unpack I think. Statistics work at the population level so the individual is not necessarily advantaged or disadvantaged by their height.

If you want to he a professional star rugby player then yeah, probably not (unless you've got Cheslin Colby's skills).

Are there any other minimum height requirements any more outside of sport?

*above! Not about. 🤦🏻‍♀️

I'm sorry. I'm probably over defensive

Understandable, especially having read more of some of the other posts. And I do have a tendency to get my tone wrong and put my foot in it! No harm done.

My son is only about as tall as I am, 5’6”. He has a very engaging personality and can best be described as a cross between the two Willie Wonka’s. He had girls following him home from school by the time he was 12; and has had a healthy love life, marriage and now divorced. And currently has, I think, three women pursuing him. I’ve never heard anyone say anything about his height at all!

I worked with an engineer who was also a local actor in musicals, stood about 5’3” and every inch was personality. He had a beautiful wife and children. I’ve know several terrific shorter men. Never an issue.

intelligence and personality will attract the people he is meant to attract. And people who judge him on height aren’t the type of people he’d want to attract anyway!

If it’s any help, both my DS2 and DS3 were 143cm at 12.5. I have their heights plotted in their red books. DS2 fell down the centipede but had a growth spurt at 14 - 16 and ended up 5’ 10” or 178cm. DS3 stuck closely to his centile growth curve and ended up just over 5’ 9” or 176 cm. So not a six footer but not that short. Your DS is on track for 176cm like my DS3.

Centipede? 😂 centiles

Do you have a similar chart?

One factor that may help reduce worry is to consider where your child is in terms of puberty. The growth charts suggest the biggest height change in boys around 13/14yrs I think, but this is due to puberty.
If your son shows no or limited signs of puberty then they won’t be having a growth spurt as it’s hormonally driven.

My DH is about 5 ft 4 and was beating women off with a shitty stick for years. He even had a fan club related to his job.

This is DS2’s chart with his more obvious fall from the centiles and growth spurt.

DS2 was very little at age 14 and I was a bit worried.

I know this is anecdotal, but my husband was very small for his age up until puberty. His dad was 5' 6" and his mum 5' 2", so no one really expected him to grow tall. His a huge strapping 6' 1" and no one knows where this came from. So, you never know ...

Shorter people are less likely to have gone breaking falls as they age, due to a lower centre of gravity.

That makes sense @KimberleyClark ! Gravity and general clumsiness are the enemy of tall gangly folks. 🤣🤣

So if a relative was a jockey then surely he just inherited short genes rather than had a condition where he wasn’t producing enough growth hormone. Does synthetic growth hormone make any child grow taller or only those who have a medical condition where they don’t produce enough growth hormone?

So if a relative was a jockey then surely he just inherited short genes rather than had a condition where he wasn’t producing enough growth hormone. Does synthetic growth hormone make any child grow taller or only those who have a medical condition where they don’t produce enough growth hormone?

some exercise and stretching routines are proven to help growth vertically. dangling with his arms fully stretched from a monkey bar supposedly works.
also hot yoga! best of luck x

What is an endo? What department is that? I want to do this for ds

I'm 5'2" on a tall day.

Aside from the fact that my height is apparently remarkable, in the literal sense, and that I have to ask people to get things off a tall shelf for me I've never really noticed any real drawbacks to being small. I've got an identical sized partner of nearly 30 years, we can swap clothes, I fucken rule at the sports I do, I've been successful in my work and any problems I do have in life are nothing to do with my height. The MN trope of height being a deal-breaker doesn't seem to be anything I've ever encountered when it comes to meeting people, although admittedly I haven't tried for a good long while

The people that seem most insecure about height are blokes that are around the 5'8" point, or at least they're the ones that feel the need to point out my height most often

And we experience the world faster 😅

My son was under an endo for his delayed puberty. Wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this route for the thorough testing that results. My son needed no treatment but it was reassuring when we were concerned about his lack of height/development.

The first thing my mum said when I said I'm having a son

"Let's hope he's not short like his father"

It made me think very differently of her. She makes jokes of my husbands height all the time and I'm sick of it.

Funny enough my little toddler is bigger than most 2 year olds his age but I'm not worried about his likely not tallness as a adult. He's a gorgeous boy and will hopefully have the personality to match!

Endocrinology. You don't have to go private. GP can refer

A view from the other side...

As a 5'4 middle-aged gent I would love to see all this male height related prejudice be banished.

I'm not having a pop at anybody in particular, but so many posts on threads like this sound like:

"My son is 14 and he's only 5'0 tall - I'm worried I've given birth to a faulty one"

Then follows a load of replies that suggest:

"Pump him full of chemicals and if you're lucky you'll get a 6 Footer like mine... Not sure what to suggest if you're not lucky - Maybe send him to sports clubs to toughen him up a bit."

(When I was 14 the school health visitors said I was below average height and wanted to put me on a growth hormone.... I shut that conversation straight down and pointed out that to have an "average" - they needed tall AND short people!...

Just as well 'cos a few years later that hormone was found to cause some quite serious side-effects & complications!!)

Why not just accept your children for the miracles they are??

And then educate them to be accepting of EVERYBODY regardless of their differences!

Can you imagine if the the thread was someone worried their daughter was still quite flat-chested at 14 and people suggested pumping her full of chemicals to "fix" her. Or, failing that, send her to drama club so she feels less shit about how society views her.

And while we're on the subject - can we ditch the "short man syndrome" retort. That is about as offensive & ignorant to us shorties as the "PMS/Time of the Month" retort is for ladies.

If "Short man syndrome" were a thing... and all the tall men were such a catch - why are there so many single parents? Why aren't they all living the fairy-tale life with their tall, protective, alpha-male partners?

There is nothing wrong with any of your children. The problem is with how society views and treats people.

Fortunately, from what I've observed in my years on this planet, the younger generations coming up through the ranks are a lot more tolerant & accepting of people's differences than that of my elders whom I learned from. So hopefully in a few generations time all these sort of issues can be flushed out.

The biggest problems I've faced as a short bloke are when it comes to buying clothes or dating.

Hardly anybody makes trousers or jeans "this short". And when I went through a phase of being a bit "portly" - nobody makes them "this short & that wide"!

And online dating - over a couple of years I sent out hundreds of introductions and either got no reply or replies to the effect of "Sorry, but I'm looking for someone taller". One response was even "ha ha ha - that's tiny!"

At this point, I'd given up, but as a test I kept everything the same and just changed my height to about 5'10 - Got plenty of replies. Engaged in a couple of messages back & forth to establish that I DID have it in me to strike up a conversation... Then confessed my real height - dropped like a stone!

So for short blokes, the dating world feels very much like the equivalent of the glass ceiling ladies find in the workplace - Both are wrong and need to attitudes change.

My brother was absolutely titchy until he was about 14, and our parents were about the same height as you and your DP. But he shot up then and is now about 5ft 8. And in my mum's family there a few guys (including her dad) who were barely over 5ft, but still didn't get passed down to anyone in the family.

My son is about to turn 12 and tracking a little below the average, but it's much less so than my brother was so I'm pretty confident he will have his growth spurt although he may be the last of his peers to do so as he is August born.

But, as others have said, I don't think height for men is the issue people think it is really so let it be what it is.