Do they perform plastic surgery on kids’ faces? Is there a danger of uneven growth in a developing nose?
I believe it is called reconstructive surgery.
What is the difference between cosmetic and reconstructive surgery?
A longer explaination: Section E-3 from here
I have read that reputable cosmetic surgeons don’t do surgery on children unless there is some real deformity or nasal blockage. I think there is some danger of malformation if the surgery is done too early, but I’m not a doctor. The nose is usually fully formed by the mid to late teens.
I also wonder about psychological damage that might be done. If the parent instigates it, the child might develop thoughts of “I need to be perfect.” If the surgery is the child’s idea, maybe the family should work on the child’s self-esteem.
But then, I’m not a psychologist either.
I heard that West Coast kids frequently get cosmetic surgery for their 16th birthdays. I would think that you’d run into some problems if the kid wasn’t fully grown yet. Of course, there are some things that they do in reconstruction, but I think those often involve follow-up surgeries to keep up with their natural growth.
But what do I know…I’m an Admin.
A little special something about plastic surgery and kids! 
A girl I went to elementary school with had surgery on her nose. I don’t remember quite why, since I was pretty small, but I believe there was something wrong with it. I’m sure it was medical rather than just cosmetic, however bad, because they left her with a big scar down her nose that was there as long as I knew her. (okay, I haven’t seen her since third grade, but still… I think she had it fixed in kindergarten or first grade)
I broke my nose when I was ten. I (well, my parents) was told at the time that chances are that my nose would be mis-shapen when I got older, but they would not do anything when I was so young as it could just make things worse.
Turns out that now I am 28 you can feel the bump but only see any sort of mis-shapenness if you look really, really hard.
I had plastic surgery at the age of ten, and it never looked abnormal as I grew and the size and shape of my face changed. Of course, this was all soft-tissue stuff (my lower lip was severed in a car wreck), which might explain it.
elfbabe, a lot of times the scarring fills in and fades in as the kid gets older. I had a white line down the middle of my lip right after surgery, and it was still visible when I was cold when I was in high school, but now it’s invisible under almost all conditions. Your classmate’s doctors were probably just waiting to see how much natural repair work her skin did before they went in mucking with stuff.