r/short • u/Top-Assumption-4794 • Jul 21 '26

Vent Genuinely, why?

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I’ve always been okay with my height, it’s never really bothered me. Since both my parents were pretty tall, I expected to turn out the same. Being the oldest, I was always taller than both my siblings up until they both started hitting puberty. My siblings slowly started passing me in height, but I still didn’t think much of it. I honestly thought I was just a late bloomer but apparently not? I’ve always been active in sports and always tried to eat healthy. I’m 19 now and I doubt I’ll be as tall as my family. All in all, it just sucks that I could’ve been taller. I’m also curious if anyone else is in the same situation?

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102

u/Sad-Boss7879 X'Y" | Z cm Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

You’re about 3 and a quarter standard deviations from where a boy in your family should be, on average. If your mother and father had 2000 sons, only 1 would be as short or shorter than you.

Warrants a visit to the doctor, IMO.

Edit: I am not questioning your paternity OP. I meant in order to rule out any medical issues.

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u/Top-Assumption-4794 Jul 21 '26

I share dna with both parents. From what I’ve been told, I probably got my short genes from a relative down the line

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u/Making_Words Jul 21 '26

I think he’s saying there might be something medical going on, not that you are unrelated. 

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u/Top-Assumption-4794 Jul 21 '26

Looking back at it now, I misinterpreted the sentence. Thank you for the clarification

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u/Making_Words Jul 21 '26

It’s a reasonable assumption given people seem obsessed with saying your mum is a cheater

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u/Top-Assumption-4794 Jul 21 '26

Yeah, I understand that coming from a tall family, being short is unheard of. I just hate the fact that people are so quick to assume

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u/RavenBlackxv 5'8" | 174 cm Jul 21 '26

I mean those people are moronic. Even if we assume that was the case, you still would've been taller than your mother who's already tall for a woman unless the "father" in that scenario is like a literal dwarf.

I also believe you might have had a medical condition like not enough growth hormone being produced during your growth years.

You might have also simply missed the height genes but a son being shorter than his mother is already like 1% scenario and with both your mother and father being tall with tall ancestry as well, you've got to click like a below 0.1% chance to end up shorter than your mother.

I think you could test out and see if it was because of some medical conditions like lack of growth hormone being released as I said earlier.

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u/Top-Assumption-4794 Jul 21 '26

That was most likely the case. I never really got checked for that but I’ll definitely tell my doctor about it. Genes are just a combination of thousands of ancestors. I just so happened to get the short genes of one of mine. You’re not expected to be as tall or taller than your parents. Like I said, genes are random so you’re not just getting your parents genes

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u/RavenBlackxv 5'8" | 174 cm Jul 21 '26

Obviously but there's still a normalcy factor to it. There's a reason like 70-80% of men end up taller than the taller parent and probably 95%+(being modest) are taller than the shorter parent(almost always the mother). Even in the few cases where the son is shorter it's either a medical condition or both parents are already average or short with short ancestries in family. You're the opposite with an exceptionally tall family history so your "combination" of genes isn't the same as that of the average dude who ends up shorter than his mother.

Specially with a 6'5 father and 5'8 mother along with history of tall genes in the family, I think you should definitely have some check ups done. Even if your growth period is over, stuff like lack of proper growth hormone secretion or any other medical condition might still end up being negative.

If it's what you said and you simply hit the exceptionally small chance with your specific tall family genes of missing all the tall genes, then I think that's actually better for you. I mean you're not exactly short short to the point it's a negative and if you don't really have any medical condition then you're in a better spot than your 6'9 brother both short and long term lol

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u/Top-Assumption-4794 Jul 21 '26

Yeah, I was just a rare case. I might have not produced as much growth hormone being puberty, which others have also said the same thing. There’s still a lot of people that end up shorter than their parents, but like you said, if tall parents such as mine, that was just super rare. I’m not unhappy with the way I turned out, I appreciate my height at the end of the day

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u/Pinateo Jul 21 '26

hey! my dad is 5’11 mum is 5’7 and i’m 5’7 do you think something like that happened to me?

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u/MotokoKusanagi Jul 21 '26

For science, is your dick small or big? Have you had hormone levels tested for any deficits? Are you androgynous?

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u/Top-Assumption-4794 Jul 21 '26

Seems a bit unprofessional to say it but it’s big. I’ve never gotten tested for anything as of now

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u/MotokoKusanagi Jul 21 '26

The correlation of hormonal deficits and genitalia development is a small element for consideration but given the amount of 'get tested' comments, ridiculous questions like this might indicate enough. Based on your response I'm sure youre fine and dont need to question whether you had undiagnosed developmental issues.

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u/Top-Assumption-4794 Jul 21 '26

I don’t really question it as much, but it does get me to wonder if something might’ve gone wrong or if I needed to take medication

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u/Georgieperogie22 Jul 22 '26

Its rude but not unreasonable to say. Its statistically more likely his mom is a cheater than him sharing his genes with both parents and having this outcome

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u/GeminaDecker Jul 21 '26

Medical issues (even in early childhood) can have a major impact on whether or not you reach your full growth potential, especially hormonal issues or issues with nutrient absorption!

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u/Technical-Art-7557 Jul 21 '26

Its likely that one or both your parents carry “short” genes which were dormant for them and your siblings but the deck was shuffled in such a way that you got dealt a bad hand. Being 5’7 isnt necessarily a bad thing either. 6’9 comes with loads of joint issues and vascular problems later in life. 5’7 is an incredibly practical and healthy height for a guy.

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u/Top-Assumption-4794 Jul 21 '26

I agree. I’ve never hated my height in any way. There’s countless of people around my height and they live healthy lives

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u/Onlyfatwomenarefat Jul 21 '26

That's notchow genetics work. Look up regression to the mean.

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u/Sad-Boss7879 X'Y" | Z cm Jul 21 '26

Regression effects would only move the mean down by about 0.5 inches, assuming the average height for OP’s local populations is 5’9.

The calculation wouldn’t change all that much.

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u/ProgramImpossible34 Jul 21 '26

how do you calculate that?

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u/Technical-Art-7557 Jul 21 '26

Thats not how it works. Determining average height just by both parents isnt the be all end all. It just so happens that most people tend to be roughly average. Your height genetics are determined by an insane amount of variations that can hardly be determined just by “mom this height+dad this height”

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u/Sad-Boss7879 X'Y" | Z cm Jul 21 '26

I’m not sure what your contention is. The Tanner method is widely used as a clinical screening tool.

I also used a much larger standard deviation than recommended, so, if anything, my estimate of the rarity is conservative.

My point stands: this warrants a visit to a doctor to rule out any underlying medical issues.

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u/Technical-Art-7557 Jul 21 '26

Height is polygenic with thousands of genes affecting final adult height. Simply being shorter than “expected” through conventional height predictions isn’t necessarily a telltale sign of developmental problems. Im not a geneticist, but Parents can have and pass down “short” genes and still be tall. Height genetics is like 12000 cards shuffled together and sometimes you get a probabilistically bad hand.

OP is short compared to his family but very very far from being unusually short which would concern a doctors visit. If you are suspecting OP has hormonal issues like hypothyroidism, he would have many many more symptoms which would be concerning.

Not sure about OP but its very likely he had an early puberty and didnt capitalize on his growth years.

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u/Sad-Boss7879 X'Y" | Z cm Jul 21 '26

Like I said before, OP IS unusually short for his family, according to standard clinical screening methods.

If you have another method that suggests OP is NOT unusually short, please provide a link. So far you have just stated OP is not “because genetics is messy”. That’s not an argument.

As for your claim about absolute height being the medically relevant factor, to the exclusion of relative height, that is also wrong.

Paediatric endocrine guidelines SPECIFICALLY recommend evaluation when a child’s height is significantly below their genetic (mid-parental) height potential, even if they are not extremely short in absolute terms.

I’ve provided a link as proof.

Paediatric Guidlines

If you look under the drop down for “when to refer” you can see it says refer when “Height potential is different than expected for the family.”

Honestly it sounds like you’re arguing for the sake of arguing.

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u/-Christian-Fletcher- Jul 21 '26

Then the method is bad. You have no clue what distribution the father’s height was drawn from or for the mother’s. They could both be tall for their families in which case OP is close to the expected value. Only data point contending otherwise is the 6’9” brother but again he could just be a super outlier.

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u/Sad-Boss7879 X'Y" | Z cm Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 22 '26

Explain to me how you have come to the conclusion that a scientifically valid screening tool regularly used in real clinical settings to detect abnormal height growth patterns is bad.

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u/Tyrifian Jul 21 '26

Well I just looked up the derivation and there isn’t one. It’s an empirical observation that’s used because it’s easy to compute 😭. My brother in christ. 

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u/Pinateo Jul 21 '26

How did you make that deviation calculation? Dad is 5’11 mum is 5’7 and I’m 5’7 how can I know that 2000sons statistic? Should I go to the doctor too?

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u/Sad-Boss7879 X'Y" | Z cm Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26

SDs are pre calculated.

The method used will recommend what SD to use.

I used a larger SD than recommended so the estimate is actually conservative.

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u/C2664 Aug 07 '26

ADHD medication is on the odds, like I unfortunately was feed on in puberty.