The Years of Growth

Patterns of growth. Are most of the members of your class taller or shorter than you are? Do you sometimes feel "different" because other people seem to be growing at a rate faster or slower than yours? You might think of your class as a train-load of travelers who are leaving San Francisco on the Chief. Some of the travelers might get off in the mountains, vacation a few days, and continue by air to New York. Others on the train might travel to Chicago and stop there. Still others might leave the train at various cities along the route. Each of you would have traveled different distances at different rates. However, all of you would have reached your destinations successfully. Your growth is a similar trip. You will grow at different rates and to different heights.

If you look at the pictures of the girls on the next page you will see an example of the ways two girls grew. Notice that both girls are of similar size at age eighteen. Each girl grew at her own rate. The age at which each girl grew fastest did not affect her final height.

Rate of growth. Perhaps your mother and father remember their height and weight at your age. They might be able to tell you when they began their period of fastest growth. Most people have one period of particularly fast growth during their adolescence. The timing of this period of fast growth is determined by your heredity.

There are some who have a growth spurt during their late teens. Other might grow more quickly during early teens. The timing of the spurt has no relationship to the person’s eventual height.

The one valid generalization concerning growth spurts is that girls tend to grow quickest during their early teens and boys tend to grow fastest later. This means that at age thirteen or fourteen some girls may have grown taller than many boys the same age. In a year or so this situation will have been reversed as the boys catch up with, and grow taller than the girls.

The average teen-ager. You have learned that boys and girls experience their growth spurts at different times. You also know that each boy and each girl grows at a rate that is controlled by his heredity.

People sometimes lose sight of these facts when they begin using the term average. The average height of all twelve-year-old boys is different from the average height of all twelve-year-old girls. However, this does not mean that most of the girls or most of the boys will be of average height. It does mean that a great number of boys and girls are taller or shorter than the average.

You should realize that the term average height has little to do with any one teen-ager. When teen-agers reach maturity, the term has much more meaning.

The awkward age? You have probably seen examples of the gawky, gangling teen-ager on television. According to the comedy writers, boys and girls in their mid-teens are seven feet tall, are very skinny, fall over their own feet, and possess voices that sound like rusty hinges. Of course, these characters are not real. However, sometimes you may feel that these descriptions are uncomfortably accurate.

Because all parts of your body are changing during the years of adolescence, some parts sometimes get "out of step" with others. A boy’s feet may grow two or three sizes in a year. A girl may grow six inches in a year and not put on any weight. A boy may suddenly find himself stumbling over small objects or bumping into furniture. These symptoms are not unusual for teen-agers and are temporary.

You can be confident that the unevenness of growth will not last long. By the time you are sixteen or eighteen (depending on the time you started your growth spurt), all the parts of your body will be in harmony again.

Try This

Your class can make one graph of the heights of the boys in your class. Another can be made of the heights of the girls. Compare the boys’ and girls’ average heights. What conclusion can you draw from this comparison?