Is my daughter’s height abnormal?

[Jasmina123]

Hi everyone,
My daughter is 11 years 8 months.
very healthy, very active doing swimming and taekwondo. but I started worrying when strangers started commenting on her height.
my daughter is 5' 9".
I am thinking to take her to the GP but I don’t want her to lose confidence in this critical age thinking there is something wrong with the way she looks.
What worrys me the most is the fact that me and my partner do not have the tall genes..
I am 5' 6” and my partner is 5’ 8” and all our family members are average to short.
my mum is 5’ 1”.
shall I over come my worries and seek professionals’ advice?
is this going to give my daughter a negative image about her appearance?

I think the issue is she’s taller than both you and your dh already, which is unusual.

has she started puberty? If she’s started her periods I would be less worried.

however I would take her to the GP to rule out any hormone or growth disorders. It may be worth a phone call first to discuss and see if they think it’s worth bloods etc.

Don’t be daft.

the issue is if she has a growth disorder. If so action can be taken to correct the issue so she grows to her optimum height. It’s not simply a matter of being tall, there are other medical problems alongside.

it may be completely normal for her and she may stop growing now. But nothing wrong with getting growth plates and hormone profiles etc just in case. Better now than wait.

I was 5' 8" at 11. Stopped a couple years later at 5' 11".
What do you think the GP will say or do? She's not abnormally tall.
I love being tall. Interestingly my DD is 5'6.5" - she hasn't grown since she was 12. She's pretty annoyed!

I was 6'1 by the time I was 14. Ended up at 6'3. Mum is 5'7, Dad is 6'. My brother is taller than me. We're both fine.

@Hedgerow2 Are your children genetically male or female? Boys are generally taller than their taller parent and girls are usually between the height of both parents. It is extremely unusual for a daughter to be taller than both her biological parents.

It might be 'unusual' but it doesn't mean there's a medical issue at play 🤨

Whatevs. It could be nothing or it could be a pituitary tumour. I would check with the GP because it is a really simple test and easily fixed if caught early enough. Might only be worth worrying about if she carries on growing as she is only an inch taller than her dad but definitely worth being aware of.

It's interesting though how there's no need to see a GP for a tall child, but if she was saying her daughter was much shorter than peers everyone would be saying there's something wrong and to get checked out. (I've seen it on here and experienced it personally)

I think an outlier is worth checking, so in this situation I would speak to a doctor, but either way it's usually nothing to worry about and just how the person is made.

No it doesn’t.

but better to have it checked 🤷‍♀️. Like any medical issue.

Same!

Not a medical professional, but check the rcpch charts. I think it says she is over 99.6th percentile and should be "usually under specialist review". I think it's highly unlikely there anything wrong - there are obviously always people at each end of the chart, but seems it's worth getting a referral to check.

Yes I was also my full adult height (5'11") by year 7. We're a family of giants though, my uncle is 6'7". DC1 is 9 and is over my shoulder already.

There's always a few very tall girls in P7 but once they go to high school lots of others will catch them up.

This thread has worried me a bit the other way! My daughter is 4'4" at 11 years and 2 months. We had a lot of testing when she was younger, but they said she was just petite. I was hoping she still has quite a bit of growing to do, but from what a lot of you have said, she might be nearly finished. No period yet though.

shall I over come my worries and seek professionals’ advice?
is this going to give my daughter a negative image about her appearance?

Yes.

Generally you can take the parents growth as a guide.

i was smallest in my class, hit puberty late, didn’t reach my adult height until 18/19.

dh also didn’t finish growing until late teens.

dd was the same, teeny tiny until 15. She’s now slightly taller than me.

if a child is an adult height, started periods etc, it’s unlikely they will grow more. Whether they’re 10 or 15. If they still look like a child and clearly have a lot of physical maturing, puberty etc to get through, they’ll probably do a lot of growing. Whether they’re 10 or 15.

I forgot to mention that my daughter has not hit puberty yet

I’d be taking her to get checked then.

don’t make it about her height. Warn the dr beforehand, it’s just a general check to make sure her bones and hormones are all in order.

She is abnormally tall given she hasn't started puberty and has average height parents.

I'd be pushing for an urgent endocrinology referral.

I forgot to mention that my daughter hasn’t hit puberty yet.

Maybe there is a medical condition causing her to be that tall.
Am not sure.. maybe the hormones are not right.

May daughter had an average height until she was 9, she started growing fast and by 10 she became the tallest in her class.

Growth hormones can go awry and it's a good idea to go to the GP.

My friend has two children both of whom are destined to be over 6' cos both mum and dad are. Even her children at that age were not that tall (I remember because I'm 5'3" and one was delighted to surpass me at age 12).

It is possible it's an early growth spurt and it's also possible she will grow no more.

But if you don't start the official watch and see process you'll have less time to respond if it becomes clear the growth hormones are over producing.

Go to the GP, her height and age can be recorded at this point and you have a baseline to form an opinion from, and will be able to get taken seriously more quickly if there is a problem as you will have it all on record.

If there isn't a problem - no harm done.

If you don't go to the GP, you'll be on the back foot whatever may be going on.

I am not aware of any very tall relatives on my side or my partner’s side.
the tallest person in the family is my brother, he is 5’ 11”

Your partner is 50 centile for a man & you are 75 centile for a woman. Neither of you are short and my guess is you’re 30+ so may have caught bugs / illnesses that she might not have. Eg repeated d&v before 5 can permanently impact growth — which is why Indian and Africa born people often have much taller kids when they come to Europe/USA/UK