Why Are Middle Schoolers So Tall Now? A Teacher’s Observations And Practical Tips
I bent down to grab the bottom leg of a heavy plastic storage cabinet last week, shifting it to the back of my 7th grade classroom for our new book nook, when a soft tap hit my shoulder. “Ms. Lila, you want me to get that?” I stood up, and Javi, a new student who’d joined us three weeks prior, was half a foot above my eye line. I’m 5’6”, an average adult woman. Ten years into teaching middle school, I still do a double take when this happens. Now, half the boys and a third of the girls in my 7th grade classes are taller than me. Ten years ago, I could count on one hand how many 12 and 13 year olds hit that mark before 8th grade.
Two days later, our school photographer sighed for the tenth time as he adjusted lines for grade level photos. “Everybody slouch a little, please. Half of you are taller than me, and we’re gonna cut off the heads of the kids in the back row.” A 6th grade girl in platform sneakers, who clocks in at 5’11”, laughed and leaned into her friend, but I saw her subtly slump her shoulders the rest of the afternoon. It’s not the first time I’ve watched a kid shrink themselves to take up less space just because they grew faster than their peers.
I texted my sister, a pediatric nurse who works at a clinic 20 minutes from my school, about this a few weeks back. She sent back a screenshot of the latest CDC growth data: the average 12 year old boy is just over an inch taller than the average 12 year old boy was in the 1990s. Average 12 year old girls are half an inch taller. The biggest factors, she said, are more consistent access to good nutrition across childhood, and earlier onset of puberty, which can be triggered by a range of things including higher rates of childhood weight gain. It’s not a crisis, just a shift that most of us adults haven’t caught up to yet.
The problem isn’t the height itself. It’s the way we unconsciously treat kids based on how big they are. A few weeks into the school year, Javi got into a minor shoving match after PE when another kid took his water bottle. The vice principal wrote him up for a day of detention, double the punishment the other kid got, and when I asked why, he shrugged and said “Javi’s as big as a high schooler. He should know better than to put his hands on someone.” It didn’t matter that Javi was the one who’d had his water bottle stolen, or that he’s only 12. He looked older, so we expected more from him.
I see the same thing happen with parents, too. A friend of mine has an 11 year old daughter who’s 5’8”, and she told me last month that a woman in the grocery store gave her a dirty look when her daughter had a meltdown over forgetting her favorite granola bar. The stranger leaned over and said “She’s old enough to handle that, isn’t she?” like my friend was raising a spoiled brat. Her daughter’s just 11, same as any other 11 year old, but nobody sees that at first glance.
Over the years I’ve picked up small, concrete changes that make this easier for kids and adults, both in the classroom and at home. I stopped automatically putting the tallest kids in the back row of seating, for example. It used to be standard to keep big kids from blocking the view of smaller kids, but it makes tall kids feel singled out and like they don’t belong up front. Now I rotate all seating randomly every two weeks, and if a kid blocks someone’s view, I adjust that one seat instead of grouping all tall kids in the back. I also keep five extra chairs with taller seat backs at the front of the room, so any kid who’s too big for the standard 16 inch student chair can swap it out without having to ask in front of the whole class. That’s one small change that took 10 minutes and twenty dollars to do, and I’ve had three different kids tell me it took away a lot of end-of-day back pain.
When correcting behavior, I never tie it to their size. Instead of saying “you’re too big to act that way,” I just address the action: “Running in the hallway isn’t safe, please walk.” That stops the unfair expectation that big kids should mature faster just because their bodies grew faster.
For parents, the small things add up too. If a stranger judges your kid for acting immature for what they think their age is, just a quick line like “She’s only 11, still getting used to big crowds” is enough to set the record straight without putting your kid on the spot. If your kid is too tall for kids’ clothing sizes but doesn’t feel comfortable shopping in the adult department, most big chain kids’ brands sell extended tall sizes online for pre-teens, so you don’t have to force them into adult styles that feel too grown up. And skip the comments about their height in front of other people—even “you’re so tall, you’re gonna make a great basketball player” can feel like a reminder that everyone’s staring at how different they are. Most kids just want to be treated like everyone else, not singled out for their body.
Last week at back to school night, Javi’s mom came in to talk, and she’s only 5’2”, a full seven inches shorter than her 12 year old son. She laughed and said she still buys his socks in the kids’ department, because his ankles are too narrow for adult sizes, and he still sleeps with the tattered stuffed rabbit he’s had since he was a baby. The hardest part, she said, is that everyone expects him to be older than he is. I told her what I do: I just ask him about the Minecraft YouTube channels he watches when I see him waiting for class to start, and I don’t tease him about his stuffed backpack covered in video game characters. He’s 12, so that’s exactly what 12 year olds like.
Yesterday I watched him at recess, chasing a group of 8th graders around the four square court, laughing so hard he snort-laughed when he got out on a bad call. He towers over everyone there, but for a minute, nobody cared. We’re all still adjusting to this shift—kids are growing faster than we’re used to, and we’re all playing catch up. The biggest thing I’ve learned is that size never tells you how old a kid is, or what they need. That’s the part we can all work on remembering, one awkward first day, one photo line, one recess game at a time.
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