Weight and height percentiles are determined by growth charts and body mass index charts to compare a child's measurements with those of other children in the same age group. By doing this, doctors can track a child's growth over time and monitor how a child is growing in relation to other children. There are different charts for boys and girls because their growth rates and patterns differ. For both boys and girls there are two sets of charts: one for infants ages 0 to 36 months and another for children ages 2 to 20 years old.
Children with failure to thrive usually have a weight that is below the 3rd or 5th percentile for their age and a declining growth velocity (meaning they are not gaining weight as expected) and/or a shift downward in their growth percentiles, crossing two or more percentiles on their growth charts.
Recently it has come to light that current growth charts for infants under 24 months overstate the expected weight of babies and lead to potentially obese children. This is because the original charts produced in 1977 were based on samples of middle class white American babies on high protein bottle fed diets in Ohio. The World Health Organisation has altered these targets in 2006 to represent a more healthy weight.
Famous quotes containing the words weight and, weight and/or height:
“The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Ah, mon cher for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a “life-work” of teaching, of social work—we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come. A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this make-shift time filler of a job is our life work after all.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)