Sex ed nurse told Year 7 that girls don't grow much more after they start their periods - any truth in that?

[mrslucycat]

I've never heard that before??

never heard that either,dangerous if no truth in it,some start at 10

That can't be true.

I started at age 11 and I'm sure I wasn't 5ft10 then!

Nope not true.

Freaky thing to have said, then! Not a glimmer of truth in it?

Certainly not true round the Cory household; we'd all be titchy as we tend to start periods early.

yes, it is true. i heard this in a talk by a very well known endocrinologist at the edinburgh science festival.

menstuation marks the end of female puberty, the growth-spurt happens mid-puberty.

so girls do grow a few more inches after their period starts but basically their growth spurt is over.

i am 5'1" and i started when i was 10

I have heard that height does slow down after you start your periods, obviously it doesn't stop. So if the tallest girl in the class starts her period at age 10 she probably won't be the tallest adult. Th tallest girl from my junior school class is now about 5ft 4

I have heard this is true via a relayed conversation from a GP. I think what was said was that growth slows in the year following onset of period and that after that it stops pretty much.

I started in my last year of Primary, where I was taller than most people including boys. I am now 5'2" disappointingly.

There is loads of stuff on the internet about this eg www.endo-society.org/media/ENDO-07/research/Early-onset-of-menstruation.cfm

I think that there is some truth in this, these links suggest that there is some relationship between menarche and growth:

www.keepkidshealthy.com/development/puberty_girls.html

pediatrics.about.com/cs/growthdevelopment/l/aa031701a.htm

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty

I started my periods when I was 9, and stopped growing when I was 10, so maybe true for me.

anecdotally I'd say it's not true - I reached my adult height at 14 - I'm 6ft exactly. I started my periods the day before my 11th bday - I was only my mother's height then: about 5ft 5in.

Was true for me and have been told similar by GP. Boys apparently keep growing until they are 21 on average - or this is what I was told.

Isn't this one of the worries about obesitiy in children and how it triggers early puberty which in turn causes them to stop growing or have i made that up?

I started at 12 - I am 5 7 ish and I remember being that height at that age.And yes I was the tallest in the class.

True in my case, though I didn't start mine til I was 16. I'm still just under 5ft though

I didn't start mine till 16; but had grown pretty much by then.

This is a bit of an extraordinary revelation to me!

Rather glad I didn't suggest dd was imagining things the nurse had said...

Have never heard this but it sounds right from my experiences - the biggest girl in my primary school started her periods at 10 and now she is not much bigger 20 years later. I started mine at 14 and was almost the height I am now. Interesting stuff...

Not in my case. I started my periods at 15. I grew 3 inches in height after that and I didn't really 'develop'(breasts, a womanly figure etc) until I was about 18

Was the smallest in the class throughout primary but ended up going to a different secondary to a lot of the others.

Was amazed to find years later that I was taller than the 'tall girls'! I know that some of them had started at primary school (age 11) whereas I had another 3 years of catching up growing :-)

Thank goodness, my predicted height based on my size throughout childhood was about 4 foot 9!

I think it's the other way round, you tend to have a growth spurt just before your periods start - might be contradicted in the endo society articles below which I haven't read yet though.

Doesn't fit here. I started at 11 and I was the same height as my Mum (5ft) and I am now 5ft6"...I stopped growing at about 15.

I've got it all written down somewhere. I was quite obsesive about it, actually. I couldn't bear the thought of being shorter than my cousins

As far as I understand it growth does slow after onset of menstruation but it doesn't stop, and most girls will grow another few inches on average.