Do girls have big growth spurts ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew almost a foot in… 7th grade? 8th grade? I forget which. By the end of that year I was 5’9”, just one inch shy of my eventual full-grown height of 5’10”.

What I remember most about that time is just being SO HUNGRY. Always. I’d eat two huge servings at dinner and polish off a sleeve of Oreos and then 20 mins later be hungry again. I was a total beanpole and just could not get enough calories.

My 16yo girl is like this. Though it happened in the middle of 9th grade. She’s now close to 5’10”! Maybe 125 soaking wet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think I ever had a growth spurt (I’m 5’3”) and my daughter definitely has not. She’s very small. Just hit 5 ft at 14.5. Grew an inch this year. Probably about done got period a year ago.

By contrast my son grew 3 inches this year from 11-12.

That is a really early growth spurt for a boy! He will probably be an early developer/done growing young.

3 inches in a year is not a growth spurt. Between 2 and 3 is normal. My kids (12 yo boy and 9 yo girl) have grown 2-3 inches every year of their lives to date.

I agree I’m the one who posted my son grew 3 inches. The dr didn’t treat it as a growth spurt. She commented that he was growing at a steady pace. He’s still in the same percentile as last year (75%).

He does have friends who have shot up 5-6 inches over the year though. Their voices have started to change too. His has not.

Okay. But boys don’t grow at a different rate from girls before puberty, which is the point. It sounds like your family is on the smaller side, so he will probably be too - just doing his growth on the earlier side which seems to be in the genes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think I ever had a growth spurt (I’m 5’3”) and my daughter definitely has not. She’s very small. Just hit 5 ft at 14.5. Grew an inch this year. Probably about done got period a year ago.

By contrast my son grew 3 inches this year from 11-12.

That is a really early growth spurt for a boy! He will probably be an early developer/done growing young.

3 inches in a year is not a growth spurt. Between 2 and 3 is normal. My kids (12 yo boy and 9 yo girl) have grown 2-3 inches every year of their lives to date.

PP said it was a growth spurt for him (in contrast to her daughter). 3 inches is a lot pre-puberty (and probably means puberty growth spurt is under way).

This depends where you’re starting from. My kids were always long/tall and grew about 3” per year consistently, but percentage-wise that’s similar to a smaller person growing less.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I grew almost a foot in… 7th grade? 8th grade? I forget which. By the end of that year I was 5’9”, just one inch shy of my eventual full-grown height of 5’10”.

What I remember most about that time is just being SO HUNGRY. Always. I’d eat two huge servings at dinner and polish off a sleeve of Oreos and then 20 mins later be hungry again. I was a total beanpole and just could not get enough calories.

So you were 4'9 in 7th grade and grew a foot in 8th? That seems highly unlikely. Are your parents tall? You must have been under the 10th percentile before the growth spurt.

Yeah, this sounds more like a case where a large growth spurt got massively exaggerated and became family legend that grew every year.

I have a 5th grader who is already 5’1” Kids who are 4’9” are pretty short by comparison. In 7th grade a kid who is 4’9” would be in 10th percentile. Jumping growth curves to the 97th percentile in one year is pretty much unheard of.

Even 6’5” boys don’t grow 12 inches in one year.

Very true. It is easy to see how things get a little exaggerated though. One of my kids had a CRAZY growth spurt of about 9in over 18 months. Or at least it seemed a crazy to us, as our other 2 have grown more gradually. This was mostly sophomore year but if you count the summers before and after…. I could easily see the story becoming “I grew nearly a FOOT my sophomore year!!” someday when he is 40 years old 🤣 The whole thing was weird. He grew an inch every 2 months and it just kept going. Not a lot of growth before or after- just one weird burst.

[Anonymous]

I had a really big growth spurt the summer between 6th and 7th grade. I think it was 4 or 5 inches. I remember I had a lot of stretch marks on my back and torso.
My older DD had a spurt when they were about 11. They grew 3 inches in 4 or 5 months.
My younger DD did not.