The long and the short of it

Isaac has never been tall – Fact!

Looking back at his red book he always followed the 9th centile and with dad being 5ft 8″ and mum 5ft 3″ none of our children are ever going to be giants.  He is affectionately known as “Little Isaac” at Beavers and school.

Last week I took Sebastian to the GP as he had a tummy bug that lasted a week and I wanted to get him check out.  Whilst we were there the GP was chatting to Isaac and was surprised to learn that he was 6 – she thought he was in reception at school.

She immediately brought his notes up and noted her concerns over his height and asked that I contact the school nurse for it to be monitored as he may be missing a growth hormone.

It didn’t really register at the time as I was still more concerned with Sebby, but as he has got better I keep finding myself dwelling on Isaac’s height.

We measured him at the end of the school holidays as he was invited to drive a Go Kart at the Daytona track and he had to be 107cm tall………he was exactly 107cm, which means that he has grown 7cm in the last 9 months as he was still free at Paultons Park when we went to meet Father Christmas last year (you pay if they are over 1m).

Today I dug out his red book to plot him on the chart.

He is not even on the chart – well below the bottom centile of 0.4!

So my “little Isaac” is little.  His peers that were the same height as him in Reception are noticeably taller than him now.  The question is, is it his genes or does he have a hormone deficiency?

Only time will tell.

Have you or your children got any experience of this?

 

10 thoughts on “The long and the short of it”

  1. He’s gorgeous whatever his height! My daughter was the other way, off the chart on the too tall range and was way taller than anyone else when she left primary school but when she turned 16 she was in line with all her friends, everyone grows differently so please don’t worry, he’s perfect 🙂

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  2. My son was on the 9th centile for growth until he was 15. Almost overnight he shot up! He is now 5ft 10. Try not to worry. Short people and tall people make up the world and you never know he may shoot up in his teenage years anyway.

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  3. No experience I’m afraid though I’m not a huge fan of the growth charts, as they are based on data from decades ago and although they do raise warning signs of problems they do also cause a lot of unnecessary worry.
    Hopefully it’s just that he’s a small child, but at least they’ve spotted it and are looking into it 🙂

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  4. My son is out of the percentiles on the other end. It can be really hard too because everyone thinks he’s older and expects him to act like an older boy. When he still is in fact little and acts like his age.

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