By Ganda Putra
The debate has started in your house again. You and your spouse are arguing about how tall your child will be when they are an adult. You are convinced they will be tall. Your spouse is convinced they will be lucky to hit an average height. A child height predictor can let you have some fun and attempt to predict the future.
What Does a Child Height Predictor Do?
There are two basic types of child height predictors. One kind focuses on the genetics and current height of the child to calculate an estimate. The second type ignores the parents’ genetics and focuses on the current growth rates of the child and forward calculates their height. Let’s look at a quick example of both methods.
The Child Height Predictor Leveraging Parental Genetics
We are going to use two sets of data for fun. The first set is using average heights for both parents and an 8-year old boy. An average American male is 70 inches, with the average American female being 64 inches. At 8 years old the average American boy is 50 inches and weighs 57 pounds. If we plug those figures into one of the better online child weight predictors it returns a height of 5’ 9”.
For fun let us take a couple who would be sure to have a few arguments. The man is 6’6” tall; the woman is 4’11” tall. Their 8 year old son is currently 50” tall, also. The calculator returns an answer of 5’10”. The father’s much greater height influenced his son up slightly over the other example, but not dramatically due to the low shorter height of his wife. If the mother happened to be 5’10” tall the answer quickly jumps to 6’ tall for the son.
The Alternative Method of Child Height Predictor
This method of height prediction requires you know how tall your child was on their second birthday. It then uses simple linear mathematics to predict a height. For example, a male child who was 38” tall on their second birthday is predicted to reach 6’3” tall. Not a very fancy method of figuring out the height, but in reality just as effective as our first method.
How Accurate are the Results?
Let the fight begin again. These child height predictors are not highly accurate, and for good reason. Think about the normal growth patterns in families you know. We all know of children who were the tallest in their class until they reached their freshman year in high school. They quit growing while their friends shot up like weeds.
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Then you have the friend who was one of the shortest in school until they reached the 16th birthday. Then it was like someone put fertilizer in their food. They grew 6 inches in the next year while everyone else was leveling off. To actually predict height requires knowing the history of both families. How do members of the family grow? Did they have early growth spurts or late growth spurts? Only be knowing the real history behind this child’s genetics can you make an accurate prediction. Child height predictors will help narrow the window, but do not trust them to be the final answer.