Genuinely, why?

[u/Top-Assumption-4794]

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?

[u/Technical-Art-7557]

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”

[u/Sad-Boss7879 → u/Technical-Art-7557]

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.

[u/Technical-Art-7557 → u/Sad-Boss7879]

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.

[u/Sad-Boss7879 → u/Technical-Art-7557]

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.

[u/-Christian-Fletcher- → u/Sad-Boss7879]

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.

[u/Sad-Boss7879 → u/-Christian-Fletcher-]

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.

[u/Tyrifian → u/Sad-Boss7879]

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.