Question:
How do I get my exact Tanner stage score if I’m genetically hairy? It’s been hard to tell. I’m trying to see if I’m really in stage 3.9 because I have chest hair developing and hair spreading to the inner thighs.
I have another question. Is having a Tanner Stage 3 amount of pubic hair at nine early puberty, or is it just my genetics? I’ve been confused about it for a while.
Answer:
Early blooming, or precocious puberty, occurs when a boy starts showing external signs of puberty before age nine. If you had stage 3 pubic hair when you were nine, that would mean you had stage 2 pubic hair at age eight and started showing more subtle signs of maturing as early as age seven. Doctors call this precocious puberty.
One sequence of changes can be out-of-synch with the other sequences, but they are usually not far off. Since I can’t see you and also don’t know what you looked like over the years, I don’t want to hazard a guess. What does your doctor say about your development’s progress?