How much do children usually grow in a year?

A person's height will stop growing at a certain age. This is because the body's growth hormone stops being secreted after a certain age, and people's height will no longer continue to grow. Only children secrete more growth hormone in their bodies, so they grow very fast. Basically, if you don't see a child for a year, you will find that he has grown a lot taller. So how much can a child grow in a year?

If your baby grows less than 4 cm in a year after 4 years old, it is best to seek medical evaluation.

Of course, different children grow in height at different rates. Normally, a normal full-term newborn is about 49 to 50 centimeters tall. He or she will grow about 25 centimeters in the first year after birth, about 11 centimeters in the second year, and about 7 centimeters per year between the ages of 2 and 4. From the age of 4 to the onset of puberty, the average height is about 4 centimeters per year. If a child has a normal growth rate, he or she can grow along the growth curve. Therefore, if you find that your child's growth deviates from the growth curve, or if your child grows less than 4 cm per year on average after the age of 4, it means that there may be a problem with the child's growth, and it is best to ask a pediatric endocrinologist for further evaluation.

All parents are curious about how tall their children will grow in the future. Foreign researchers have developed a method to calculate children's target height: for boys, the height is the sum of their parents' heights, plus 13 centimeters, and then divided by 2. For girls, it is the sum of the parents' heights, minus 13 cm, and then divided by 2. Of these, 13 centimeters is the average height difference between men and women. However, this is not the only criterion. Although the height of the parents will affect the future height of the child to a certain extent, in fact, the influence of the acquired environment is also not small. For example, factors such as sleep quality, nutrition, exercise, or the rapid progression of puberty can cause errors in the actual height in the future.

Why does the child not grow tall?

A child's height is basically closely related to genetics. If the parents are not tall, there is a high chance that the child will not be tall. Another situation is that if the parents were small when they were young and only started to grow after puberty, it is called constitutional growth retardation. This is a normal variation, which means that the puberty of such children will be late like their parents, and they will start to grow noticeably later. This situation can be waited out. However, the following factors may also be responsible for the child's short growth, such as malnutrition and certain diseases that affect the rate of height growth. For example, congenital heart disease, chronic liver disease, gastrointestinal disease, chronic kidney disease, immune or neurological diseases will affect the child's future height. These children are also relatively light in weight, and are insufficient in both height and weight.