Can someone explain height to me please?

[flyingwidow]

My DS is 3.7 yo. He is a wee chappie- height approx 95cm, and weighs in at 2stone2lbs. Completely healthy, happy, and developmentally normal!

He is on approximately the 16th percentile for height. People VERY OFTEN comment on how diddy he is!

He was 3 weeks early and measure at 0.4th percentile for height then.

I am 5'2, my husband is 6''2.

Does being short at the age of 3.7 yo mean that you will be short as an adult? Or does it mean that they will have growth spurts later?

Just to add that I am not hugely bothered if he ends up being pint sized- as someone else said, they don't make diamonds brick sized! That is my standard response to others at present!

He does stand a good head shorter than many of his peers at preschool!

Same age son is 105cm, size 9 feet. I'm 5ft 10 and DH 6ft 2. DS seems a lot taller than many kids his age at the moment.
They do seem to grow in fits and starts though.

That's reassuring, that he should be taller than 5.4. I know that I shouldn't care but I would prefer it if he wasn't always super short as I think it can make life harder as a man.

My mum is 4'9.5" and dad is 6'. I'm 5'8". I was always the smaller at school, until my brother joined.

I was very little as a kid and grew late (even had growth hormone injections to move my growth spurt earlier).

My two boys are low on the centile scale, but, as I was forever telling bloody HVs - we can't all be in the middle of the scale. Got to have highs and lows to have an average.

Your DS will most likely end up somewhere between you and your DH, probably closer to DH.

Just make sure you give him the confidence to be himself and to be happy with himself.

I could do with more hair though.

Apparently boys will always be taller then their mums

I have a (female) friend who is 6ft whose DP is about 5ft 3. On my super scientific calculations, she's about 8 inches taller than average and he's about 8 inches shorter. Meaning a child of theirs would be about average, so perhaps 5'11" if male, making him shorter than his mum. I will report back in 25 years.

The other predictor is add the mother's height and the father's height together, divide by 2 and add 4" (for boys, don't know about girls)

If I do that for my DSs I get roughly 2 x their height at 2, give or take half an inch. Interestingly it also tallies with their red book predictions. Might be coincidence, or it might not. Maybe that is the way a lot of people grow.

But that doesn't mean everybody will grow according to a formula. Just to add another anecdote (I know anecdotes don't prove anything but I tell you anyway), DH used to be the tallest in his class. By miles - I've seen pictures and he is a head above some of his class mates. He carried on that way until he was 13 and then he stopped growing and everybody else caught him up and plenty overtook - he is 5.9 so only a fraction over average for people of his age. Growth is a funny old thing.

Ah.... Ottillie, I did read that the assumption of a son always being taller than his mother, was in cases where the mother is shorter than the father!!

What i find fascinating, is that he has jumped from 0.04 percentile at birth to 16th percentile now... so much for following your 'growth line'!

The anecdotes have been fascinating! I find it all so interesting!

Ooh didnt know that about their height at two! Will measure dd in a couple of months and see what the outcome is.

What i find fascinating, is that he has jumped from 0.04 percentile at birth to 16th percentile now... so much for following your 'growth line'!

DS went from 15th centile to 75th in his first year and then eventually to 90th.

My DD1, 16, has just hit double her height at 2 (5'10"). DD2, 13, should make 5'2", according to that rule and is now 4'9". Funny mix of genes going on there.

I was told girls are never taller than their fathers and boys are never shorter than their mothers.

I'm the same height as my dad (my mother is 5'0"). Dh and I are the same height. As dd1 is already at 13 only an inch, if that, shorter than her dad (and me) does that mean she's stopped growing? I have also heard (from a paed) that girls pretty much stop growing when their periods start?

I definitely kept growing after my period. I was one of the shortest until 16 but one of the tallest by 18. I'm 5'9 now.

It will be interesting to see how ds turns out. Father's height is 5'9 as well, but all the men in my family are 6'3. I wonder if that will come through.

Apparently 2" of growth is average after periods start. DD1 has grown about 3" I think.

Looking at DS' s friends, it's pretty clear that some boyscan be little until they hit their teens then have a massive growth spurt - it would play havoc with the lines on their growth charts, if anyone still botheted with red books etc by that age.

DS was always pretty much the tallest of his friends, but now at 15 he has stopped growing at nearly 6ft, and some friends he was towering over acouple of years ago are now taller than him. I'd guess that with a tall father he won't stay tiny for ever, but you may have to wait another 12 or 14 years to find out.

Come on, we all know these rules of thumb are rubbish. Just think of real people you know: Tiddly parents producing huge offspring, huge parents producing petite kids. Kids who were the smallest in the class until y9 when they quietly overtook everyone. Kids who were huge until start of y7 when they simply stopped growing & got swiftly overtaken by everybody else.

Each of my kids have wandered all over the centile height charts.

I'm not sure I believe that twice your height at two. My two were tiny at two. Always the smallest. Now that they're older they seem to be at least average. I am not sure because my dc1 is the youngest in her class but she seems to be average, which given the age, might be a smidge above average.

I read that at 8 years old you are 72% of your adult height! Apparently that one is way more accurate.

I think the average-parents'-height formula usually says that your child will be x-height with a margin of error of something like three inches either way - so if it says 5'10", your son should be between 5'7" and 6'1" - a pretty big range.

I think DS tried it for himself a couple of years ago and it said he would be 5'10"; he's actually 5'11 1/2" so I suppose that means it was accurate by its own standards. Certainly better than the online thing I tried when he was about four, which said he would be 6'2", or the double-your-height-at-two thing, which I think would have made him even taller.

pj67, it's average height plus 7cm for a boy and minus 7cm for a girl which is about 2.8 inches not four inches!

Sorry Weegie - both my sisters were taller than my Dad

I'm struggling with this 'double your height at 2' theory (not heard it before this thread). I work with a LOT of 2 yr olds and mostly they are less than half my height, and, given that I'm only average height for a woman of my generation, most of these boys are going to be AT LEAST 6" taller than me when thy grow up. Given that each generation (as a whole) is taller than the last, I suspect a considerable number of them will be taller still.

I'm taller than my dad. Postwar nutrition maybe.