Does anyone know anything about Growth?

[KatyMac]

When DD was a baby - she grew very fast

She was always much bigger than her contempories

The HV & GP discussed whether she needed to be referred to check that she wouldn't be vastly tall & decided that she wouldn't estimating 5 ft 11.5 inches as her predicted height

All through junior school she has been taller than her friends but I always felt that this was because she grew at a different point/age to the other girls.....possibly because she is mixed race (this was suggested by GP)

But at 11 she is quite small in her year - not the smallest but not 'average' iyswim

I am not worried as I am 5ft 5, DH is 6ft 1 (my mum & DH's mum are both about 5 10, my baby bro is 6 4) as I feel very confident that she will be at least my height

But how does it all work - do they have predicted growth spurts, is it predictable? do the health professional know what they are talking about?

A child's potential adult height can be roughly predicted based on their parental heights. In the child health record (red/green/blue book) there is a formula for calculating predicted height (I think it's on the page for growth age 5-18).

It gives a range, so a child can be monitored based on the expected range eg you can expect a child to be between the 50th and 75th centiles for example, and if they are significantly shorter or taller than predicted they can be referred on for investigation.

This happened to my friend.

She was always the tallest. Then she stopped growing just when all the rest of us started growing. She;s now my shortest friend. Not in a bad way. Just in a petite way.

Im not sure how they work, I think its just a estimation based on there current height and how much they predict they will grow every year.
I will be watching this thread with interest as my 19 month old DD is very tall for her age, she looks at least a year older then she is. Am worried shes going to be too tall when shes older.

My Dd is very tall now (aged 5). She;s always been on 95th centile. Health professionals never commented. I;m feeling a little paranoid at the moment, though. We went bike shopping, and the assistants made a big play of how tall she was. ( Mon Dieu, I thought she was 8 etc etc). She was a little sad to end up with a generic bike for 7-9 year olds, rather than the little 'Princess' bike she coveted.

Her predicted height is 5ft 11.5 at 11 she is 4ft 10

I can't see her growing that much now, but maybe she can

DD was predicted to be my kind of height at 2.5 but stopped growing at 4 for over 12 months (due to intervention for her asthma). She was always the smallest in her Primary year groups.

She was bone aged at 7 and again at 11 where it was predicted that her bone age was 2 years behind her chronological age so therefore she would catch up in her teens.

A hip injury at the age of 14 lead to an x-ray which showed her growth plate has already fused so she would most likely grow no more.

So, instead of the prediction of 5ft 6 to 5ft 9 she stopped at 5ft 1.

She started senior school tiny, she needed 8-9 year old clothing but she did have a spell of rapid growth as puberty hit and needed 12-13 by the time she hit Year 10. If your DD hasn't yet started puberty she may well have another growth spurt.