Short Stature and Two Considerable Dips on the Growth Chart

Well my pediatrician was concerned about my 2nd daughters growth when she was between 2 and 3. She "fell off the chart" and was never very high on it to begin with. We did some labs, and he also referred us to a nutritionist type person (or was it a dietician?) and she gave us a lot of tips about beefing up her diet. I think that helped a lot. We did some special labs also, but that was just a blood draw. He almost ordered the bone x-ray thing, but decided not to because the labs were decent. Eventually she got back on the chart. I asked him, is it possible she is just having a reverse growth spurt, like a latency period? And he said yes, totally, but his job as a pediatrician was to watch for signs of potential issues and look into them, so that's what we were doing.

Personally I was never too worried about it, mostly because my older daughter was also small (and a far poorer eater, but whatever) and she seemed otherwise healthy. I also told my pediatrician that I have a cousin with Turner's Syndrome (a growth-related syndrome for which she had to take hormones growing up, and for some reason makes her unable to carry children). He said that was irrelevant because it's not a genetic syndrome but a chromosomal one.

Anyway, that was my experience. At the last appt, he was pleased that she was "back on the chart" and he did order one more round of labs, which I never did... oops. I was kinda over all the scrutiny at that point. Her annual is due this month though so we'll see what he says.

What is his age? Of course, you should do what they say, if there is a problem they can probably treat it.

My dd fell off the charts as a baby and toddler and has always been under the 10th percentile her whole life...she is back on the chart though.

All the kids in my family are small and most the adults are too. I'm only 5'1 and small boned so it never surprised me that my dd is small too. Some kids are a full head and shoulders taller than her, but her growth is steady so that's usually what they look at.

I'm guessing she'll be my size when she's grown. She's also a late bloomer which doesn't help matters. She's 10 now, but looks like a very little girl when some of her friends are already my size and developed.

There's a lot of variability, you should look at the other kids in your family...does your son look similar in size?

I'm not sure if this is the same situation as your son, but my oldest son would be in the 90th% then the 30th, then 90th, then 30th. We always figured we were catching him right before a growth spurt and then Ruhr after lol
Hopefully it's something similar with your son, and that it's not anything you need to worry about but I'll keep y'all in my prayers! Things like these are so stressful!

1. were the height/weight values reversed when entered? this happened to use once. It's easy to do when your kid is 47" tall and weighs 46 lbs.

2. did he forget to take his shoes off one time?

My son, now almost 6, has this exact same situation. His growth had always been fine. At his 3 year physical, he was in the 54 percentile for height. At his 4 year, he had dropped (or not grown) and was in the 27 percentile. My pedi. conducted a set of labs, which were all normal. She wanted to see him again in 6 months to measure him and talk about the wrist bone age test and an endocrinologist. At 4.5 six months later, he was in the 25th percentile so we had the bone age test done and it showed his bone age to be 2.11yo and we went to see an endo. Best thing we ever did! By the time we saw her, he was in the 21st percentile. She explained all different causes of his short stature and growth decline, the most possible being lack of production of growth hormone. She ordered more panels of bloodwork but set-up him up for a growth hormone stim test, which checks to see if your body is making enough hormone on its own. It's a long test using an IV but again, best decision because we found out his hormones were fine. We do not have a reason, as of yet, why he is growing at a much slower rate than peers. He is no longer dropping and stays in the mid 20th percentiles. We see the endo every 6 months. He may have a growth sprut and shoot up some but he will stay smaller. He currently wears 3T-4T pants with size 5 shirts.

Sorry for such a long post. Just wanted to share because we actually went through the full experience. I hate on MS when people don't have the knowledge and reply "don't worry about". IMHO, follow through on the testing and appointments. Your child should not consistently be declining in their growth. You may find it's "nothing" or like us, they can't identify the cause but either way, at least you are not losing time your child should be developing. HTH and best of luck.