When do boys stop growing?

There comes a time in some parents’ lives when their little bundle of joy becomes a teenager who towers over them in stature. But will this moment happen to you? And if so, when do boys stop growing?

Not surprisingly, the answers are “not entirely clear cut,” according to Dr. Wanita Bamba, a pediatric endocrinologist and medical director of the Growth Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Babies begin to grow at a rapid pace. “By the time you buy clothes that are six months old, they’ve outgrown them,” jokes Bamba.

Children grow an average of 2 inches per year, says Dr. Marisa Censani, a pediatric endocrinologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. “As a child enters puberty, this height increases to 2 to 3 inches per year at the onset of puberty and to 3 to 4 inches per year during the child’s peak growth rate.”

“Puberty really is a deciding factor when it comes to height,” agrees Bamba. “Boys usually start puberty a little later than girls. “They can be around 12 years old before they start puberty, and then they often don’t finish growing until they’re 17 or 18.”

However, she notes that some children may start puberty earlier, while others are “late bloomers,” so these recommendations are not hard and fast rules.

Bamba says that when trying to figure out whether a man’s growth is complete, there is a “clue”: once their shoulders become wider in the later stages of puberty, their growth is likely almost complete.

Can you predict a child’s height?

There are several calculations you can use to “predict” a child’s height, including some average parent height target formulas that your pediatrician can explain.

For example, you can take a two-year-old’s height and multiply it by half to see what their height will be as an adult. Or, for men, you can take the mother’s height, add five inches, and average it with the father’s height to find a genetic target. But the difference in height between parents will increase the likelihood of error.

Bamba cites his own family as an example. Her husband is a full 12 inches taller than her, and they have one “incredibly tall” child and one “average height” child. “It kind of depends on the genes you get, but we don’t have a good way of knowing them,” she says.

Doctors may use bone age assessment to assess skeletal maturity.

“A bone age assessment is an X-ray image of the left hand and wrist that is used in a growth assessment to check a child’s growth plates and assess growth potential,” explains Chensani. “It can be used to predict future growth and provide information about a child’s pubertal development.”

When should you worry about your child’s growth?

The growth of infants and toddlers depends largely on nutrition, neonatal history and previous medical conditions, Bamba says. “But just because you’re a small child or a toddler doesn’t mean you’ll be short when you grow up,” she stresses.

There are two ways to look at height: as a static measurement at any given time, or as a “growth rate,” which is how quickly you grow.

“You may be low on the growth curve but have a normal growth rate because you are growing at a good rate, or you may even have normal growth but it is not normal because you are not growing as fast as you expect. – says Bamba.

Both measures are important in different ways, but Bamba says that a person with a “constant growth rate is less of a concern than someone who crossed the percentiles up or down as a child.”

Parents who are concerned about their child’s development should first consult their pediatrician, Centani says. The pediatrician may refer them to a “pediatric endocrinologist who specializes in conditions related to childhood hormones” or a pediatric gastroenterologist who treats “children with growth failure and weight loss.”

“The best indicator of whether a child is growing well or not is how consistently they grow,” explains Bamba. “If they’re constantly growing, it’s probably not a hormonal abnormality because you need something to stimulate it. But if kids aren’t growing consistently, I think that’s really what worries us.”

Centani adds, “Sleep and nutrition are vital to optimizing growth.”