Reply to Stabilization of growth percentiles

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The growth curves are artificial lines. The scientists did not measure kids over time and create a curve for each kid. They plotted every the data points for every kid at every age, and created lines connecting the 95th percentile weight at every age group, whether it belonged to kid A, B, C at age 2 or kid X, Y, or Z at age 3. These curves are the bane of the existence of pediatricians who understand this, and are misinterpreted by pediatricians who don’t. [/quote]

So how should we be tracking our child's growth trajectory?[/quote]

PP. We don’t need to track our kids’ growth trajectory other than using the chart to determine unusual growth trends. For example, a kid that was 25th for both height and weight jumps to 99th for weight and remains 25th for height. Or a child that was 75th for height is 5th a year later.

This article does a better job explaining it all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/parenting/growth-chart-accuracy.html?unlocked_article_code=1.hlA.fgEG.TZFqOF0eCpH_&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The problem is that the charts are out there and it’s really hard not to look at those curves and not see a projected path. My kid “fell off” from 99th for height last year and even though I know how the growth charts were created, I had a twinge of “I need to do something!” But he’s a 14 year old boy who is just starting puberty, so I had to talk myself off the ledge and acknowledge that he’s going to grow when he’s going to grow.

Here is an example of what individual growth curves look like. Some kids start and end up at roughly the same percentage. Some do not.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Individual-height-growth-curves-for-a-103-boys-and-b-74-girls-The-same-growth-curves_fig2_259243964[/quote]

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