Tiny Teen

[Anonymous]

Don't waste your time talking with your regular pediatrician. Just make an appointment with a pediatric endocrinologist. Get all of his pituitary hormone levels checked out -- thyroid, growth, cortisol, prolactin -- to make sure he doesn't have hypo-pituitarism. Do a bone age x-ray. If all that checks out fine, then you will have much more peace of mind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Don't waste your time talking with your regular pediatrician. Just make an appointment with a pediatric endocrinologist. Get all of his pituitary hormone levels checked out -- thyroid, growth, cortisol, prolactin -- to make sure he doesn't have hypo-pituitarism. Do a bone age x-ray. If all that checks out fine, then you will have much more peace of mind.

This and please stop calling him Tiny - hard on a guy's self esteem!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Don't waste your time talking with your regular pediatrician. Just make an appointment with a pediatric endocrinologist. Get all of his pituitary hormone levels checked out -- thyroid, growth, cortisol, prolactin -- to make sure he doesn't have hypo-pituitarism. Do a bone age x-ray. If all that checks out fine, then you will have much more peace of mind.

This and please stop calling him Tiny - hard on a guy's self esteem!!

Will do and I don't call him "tiny" to his face at all. In fact we don't discuss the issue unless someone brings it up. Then I typically downplay it because as a 15 year old he gets it.

All great suggestions. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So we have been watching my now 15 year old DS. He was normal size at birth (bigger than all his siblings not by much) and has developed totally normally. My DH is 6'5" and I am 6'1", we are not small people. His older sibling is 16 and 6'2" and 150 lbs. He younger sister is 10 and a shocking 5'7". He started to fall off the weight chart around 11 or 12. I just had him into the doctor for his 15 year old check up and he is really low on the height chart. Last year I was worried about him not growing or hitting puberty (he has like 4 arm pit hairs). He came in today at 5'6" and 95 lbs. For perspective, he will be starting his sophomore year in the fall. Our doctor last year said we should watch him and reevaluate this year. He grew 1 inch and put on 7 lbs. Our doctor seemed to hesitate about doing anything more at this time and feels like he is on the cusp of really growing. She wants to see him back in 6 months but hasn't recommended further testing. People keep telling me they know these guys who were tiny in high school then really grew in college and I know that males tend to continue to grow later but I can't help to worry that something is going on. I just don't want to miss that ability to help him grow if we have to. Has anyone experienced this? Another issue is that even being together as a family always turns into someone saying something about their sizes which I think is beginning to affect him. It is really hard to control that even when outside people (such as buying t-shirts at the beach) say something.

I do like our doctor and feel like I could ask her for more. Should I? And if so what?

My husband grew an astonishing 6 inches during the summerbetween his 12th & 13th birthdays.

My MIL took him to the pediatrician twice because he was in so much pain that they thought he had some kind of bone disease. On the first visit at the beginning of the summer he'd only grown an inch since his well visit in March, but on his second visit, she told them that he'd grown 6 additional inches & all of his pain stemmed from growing pains.

He was away at sleep away camp all summer as a CIT, so his parents hadn't seen the change in growth, but when they picked him up they were shocked that he was the same kid!
He was now taller than his dad & went from being 5'9 to being 6'5" in 6 months.

It took him a really long time to understand why all of the smaller kid wanted to be such good friends with him, because they saw him as protection from the bullies & he's a really sweet guy (his nickname for his fraternity was "gentle giant"). He grew so fast, his brain didn't have time to come to grips with it, as in his own head he still considered himself to be average sized, but everyone else saw him as a giant.