Last updated on August 24, 2020
Question:
Hi.
I am a 15-year-old male (I’ll be 16 in a month) and I was wondering how tall I will be. I am 6 foot 1 inch tall and 190 pounds. My father is also around 6’1, although he was 6’2 when he was younger and my mother is 5’3. I am pretty sure I have been growing steadily my whole life and haven’t experienced a growth spurt. I started puberty around three years ago at age 13. I have been told that I will be 6’5 when I am done growing and some people say 6’2 and I wanted to know because it’s really starting to become an obsession. Recently I have started to grow some chest hair and some facial hair. I have some arm and leg hair although my father has a lot more body hair than I do. How tall will I be?
Answer:
It is very easy during your teenage years to become obsessed by various ideas. But no matter how long you spend thinking about how tall you might become, it won’t make any difference. As Jesus asked, “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” (Matthew 6:27).
I can’t answer your question with precision because the most important factor in how much more you will grow lies in knowing what stage of development you have reached. You can use the Tanner Stage Calculator for Boys to get a fairly decent estimate. The problem is that growth varies widely among individuals. There are estimators for final height, but they are only rough guesses. Even knowing when you first notice puberty doesn’t tell much since most boys miss the early signs for several years. That you are starting to get facial and chest hair seems to indicate that you are in at least stage 4. Most boys grow another 1 to 3 inches in this stage, but once again, not knowing if you are near the beginning or near the end of the stage, I can’t say how much more potential growth you have in you.
A few boys don’t notice a growth spurt, even though it was there. Sometimes it is only a slight speed up and the growth is just taken in stride.
Question:
Hey again.
I took the test and it says that I’m in stage 3.8. I know that sometimes you can’t notice the growth spurt but I am pretty sure I have grown 2-3 inches a year all the time. All my friends have shot up to about 4-5 inches in a year or more. Also, I have heard that every generation is taller and all of my friends are taller than their fathers and I’m still the same height as mine. There have also been cases were boys ages 15-17 have had growth spurts in that age. Can I still have a growth spurt even though I have chest and facial hair although I don’t have a lot? I compared mine to my father’s and he has a lot more than I do. Around this time last year, I had sprained my ankle and had gotten x-rays of my foot and the x-ray had shown that my growth plates are still open, does this mean anything?
Answer:
Let’s do some math for a moment. You are currently 73 inches tall. If you had only grown 3 inches a year, then in 16 years you would have only reached 48 inches (4 feet). Thus you did go though a period of time when you grew faster than you thought.
As nutrition improved in our country, it was true that each generation tended to grow taller than the previous; however, that “rule” no longer applies. There is only so much gain that can be received through better nutrition.
Yes, there are some boys who don’t have a growth spurt until later, but that is because they don’t start puberty until later. It is possible for puberty to start as late as 16 and still be considered normal.
It is typical for an older man to have more body hair than a young man. Even after you have long since stop growing you will continue to develop more body hair. In that is the plague of older men because hairs continue to develop in the oddest places — in the middle of your forehead, on your ears, on your nose — while at the same time you are losing hair from the top of your head. Such is life as an older man.
That your growth plates were still open means that you still would be growing in height. Assuming all the questions were answered accurately, 3.8 means you are reaching the point when your growth will start to slow down. You are likely to put on another one to three inches before it completely stops, though it might take another two years to grow that much.