My 11-Year-Old Daughter Is 5’6: What I Learned About Unusual Height and Childhood Development
Last month, I stood behind my daughter Lila at the annual pediatrician checkup, watching the nurse mark her height on the worn door frame, and I did a double take. 5 foot 6. The nurse blinked, leaned in to check the ruler again, then scribbled the number down and said, “Wow, that’s the tallest 11-year-old I’ve measured all year.”
I’d known Lila was big for her age since she was a toddler. My husband is 6’4 and I’m 5’9, so we always expected her to take after us. But the older she gets, the more obvious it is how unusual her height is. Strangers stop us in the grocery store to ask if she’s really only 11. Other parents at soccer practice assume she’s a coach, not a player. When she went to summer camp last year, the nurse checking her in asked for her 16-year-old sister’s name instead of hers.
At first, I brushed all of this off. I was tall as a kid too, I told myself. It evens out later. I’d say to Lila when she came home upset, “You’ll love being tall when you’re older. It’s a great thing.” It took me a couple of years to realize that didn’t help her when she was 10, coming home crying because a group of boys on the playground called her “giant Lila.”
The first time I realized we needed to make small changes was when her 5th grade teacher emailed me about PE class. Lila was refusing to join the warm-up laps, and the PE teacher thought she was being uncooperative. When I picked Lila up that afternoon, I asked her what was going on. She mumbled that she had to line up first by the door, because they line up by height, so everyone watches her run first, and she’s way faster and taller than everyone else, and all the kids stare. That same week, I noticed she’d started slouching so badly her shoulders hurt at night. She’d hunch over in group photos, lean against anything she could when we stood in line, just to take up less space.
I called the PE teacher that night, and we worked out a tiny change: instead of lining up first by height, Lila could line up at the end with the kids who need extra time or have asthma. It took two minutes to arrange, and I got an email a couple days later saying Lila had joined the laps without any complaint after that. A week after that, I emailed the principal to ask if they had an extra middle school-sized desk in storage – Lila’s knees were crammed into the standard 5th grade desk, and she came home with bruises on her shins all the time. They dropped the new desk off at her classroom the next morning, no cost, no hassle. Those small changes made way more difference than any speech I gave about confidence.
After the pediatrician’s appointment this year, we got referred to a pediatric endocrinologist to rule out any underlying conditions, which I’d recommend any parent do if their kid is far outside the growth chart. The doctor did a bone age scan and ran some blood work, and said everything was completely normal. Lila just has tall genes and is a little early with her growth spurt, and she’ll probably end up around 5’10 or 6’ when she’s done growing. He said it is unusual, about 1% of 11-year-old girls hit 5’6 this young, but it’s not dangerous, just different.
What no one talks about, though, is the social part of being an unusually tall kid. I’ve gotten all kinds of intrusive questions from other people: “Did you feed her extra steroids?” “Aren’t you worried something’s wrong?” I used to overthink it, wonder if I should be pushing for some kind of treatment to slow her growth. But over the past year, I’ve picked up small, practical things that work way better than worrying.
First, I stopped minimizing her feelings. Instead of saying “it’s fine, you’ll love it later,” I started saying “that comment was rude, and it’s okay to be annoyed by it.” I also ask a specific question every Sunday night: “Did anyone say anything weird about your height this week that you want to talk about?” It opens the door for her to bring it up if she wants, instead of making her carry it around.
Second, we practiced a couple of go-to lines she can use for awkward comments, so she doesn’t have to stand there feeling embarrassed. If a stranger says “wow you’re so tall, how old are you?” she can say “I’m 11, yeah I get that a lot” and turn back to what she was doing. If kids tease her, she can say “At least I can reach the top shelf for you” and walk away. It gives her a script so she doesn’t have to come up with something on the spot when she’s caught off guard.
Last week, we went back-to-school clothes shopping. It’s still a hassle – kids’ jeans are too short, junior sizes are too big in the waist – but Lila found a pair of high-waisted jeans that fit her length perfectly, and she came out of the fitting room grinning. She didn’t give her height a second thought that day, she just talked about how she couldn’t wait to wear them on the first day of sixth grade.
Next week, she starts middle school, and I know she’ll still get comments. Some days she’ll come home mad, and some days she won’t care at all. There’s no neat fix for being the odd one out, and I don’t have all the answers. But for now, the small stuff – the right desk, a line at the end of the pack, a script for awkward moments – works better than any big speech about confidence. We’re just taking it one day at a time.
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