My 14 year old son is kind, smart, and athletic…but he’s also very short for his age. I’m not sure what his height is right now, but we once used a formula that is said to be quite accurate, which projected him as likely reaching 5’2" as an adult. So not “little people” short, but very short within the “normal” range. Unsurprisingly, he is sensitive and insecure about this.
Today I took him to the tech center in our school system to help him find the orientation for a summer online class he is taking. A secretary helped us find the right room. Right after he walked in, she loudly remarked to me, while still standing next to the open door, “What a cute little guy…adorable!”
I’m not quite as short (5’7", as a kid I was small, when I was 10 I looked about 6), but the attitude that I have about is that I grew to a perfectly respectable height and then had the decency to stop.
People aren’t mind readers. We have no way of knowing how sensitive strangers are about a subject. So sometimes we say something that distresses another person even though it wasn’t our intention.
It’s not much better at the other end. My son is really tall for his age, and people have always had unreasonable expectations for him. They expect him to be very athletic, but he’s a bit of a klutz, and particularly terrible at basketball. People insist on asking him if he plays basketball, and act shocked when he says “No,” like he has some personal responsibility to the sport because he is tall. People say “Well, you* should *be playing it.” People who know his age still expect him to act older than he is, because he looks older. When he was four, but looked like he could be seven, people who knew how old he was would still ask if he could read yet.
I like to think it’s made me more sensitive. One of my son’s friends is kind of short for his age-- his mother is about 5-even, and his dad is about 5’6, so he’s probably on track. Once I made a point of taking them to a county fair a county over, because they had really liberal height policies, as opposed to a kind of disappointing time we once had at a carnival where his friend was still to short for some of the “good” rides. At least they are both tall enough now that this isn’t a problem.
I’m sorry this happens to your son. I hope you gave that woman a long, blank stare.
Something that’s going to be a little weird in a few years: my first wife was quite petite, and both my eldest son (already mentioned) and my 11 year old daughter are short (though I’m not so worried about her as the stigma is much less for females). My second (current) wife is 5’10" and her brother and father are well over six feet tall, while her grandfather was 6’7". We have two younger kids that are her biological offspring (though she considers all four “her kids”); they are in the 90th percentile for their age and so both of them will likely pass, and then tower over, their older siblings at some point.
ETA: This was in response to Antinor, the only comment when I started composing.
But is it unusually sensitive for a high school boy not to feel good about being referred to in front of his peers as “cute little guy…adorable”? That doesn’t seem to me to require mind reading.
I could see that, and given that my son is a good actor (he did a summer theatre camp when he was 8 or so, and made a great MacBeth), he probably should have pursued that line of work on a TV sitcom, come to think of it.
And something like this humiliatingly happened to him and his sister at the sledding hill earlier this winter. Some guy apparently saw they were there without parental accompaniment and asked them if they knew their parents’ number. I got a call from a perfect stranger chewing me out for leaving my little kids there unsupervised. I responded that they were 14 and 11, and he retorted that “no, there’s no one 14 here” but then apparently my son spoke up that he was, because the guy was like “you’re 14?!?” and the wind went out of his sails, and was apparently too embarrassed to even admit his mistake as he just hung up and that was the end of that, except for my son’s mortification.
And since he and his sister are in the 98-99th percentile on their standardised tests and all that jazz, they do get taken for even more incredibly precocious super-geniuses. I can also relate with the other end of it with my younger and taller ones, who are mistaken for being older (and thus are most likely seen as dullards, though no one says it out loud).
But all that aside, this was the vo-tech building. No one takes classes there, to my knowledge (and I have substitute-taught there in the past) who is not at least in high school. He was searching for a high school teacher for an orientation for an online high school class. So unlike the guy at the sledding hill, where the context could easily make him imagine very young children being there, she should have known better in this case.
I know the feeling! My brothers are 6’2" and 6’5", my sister and I are the same height (she may be a little taller). I get my height from my mom and bio-dad. Their dad was 6’3" and he has a brother who is around 6’7". I know for a lot of guys it would be difficult, but hopefully he ends up with a good self image, regardless of height.
My partner is 6’10", and has to deal with these comments all the time. But worse, as an adult, he has to deal with sexual comments like “Are you long as well as tall?” or even more explicit, “How big is it?” He takes it in stride, but it still bugs me.
My first temptation was to say that it has to be easier for a man at least to be unusually tall than unusually short. But six-foot 10 does seem like it would be pretty difficult to deal with if you weren’t being compensated handsomely as a basketball player or something. Even at my size I hate riding in the back seat of a car or on Greyhound. At nearly 7’, I assume only vans or customised vehicles would be an option.
We were concerned about our elder son’s lack of stature when he was about 11 or 12 we took him to an endocrinologist who determined that Patrick would likely be about 5’8". Colour me happy. I didn’t want him to suffer the sorts of snide comments which are directed at those who are a bit different. He was a late bloomer and never really had that growth spurt which boys get in their early to mid teens. He just kind of grew slowly and reached an adult height of 5’11"
I know this isn’t your main concern but I just thought I’d mention that those formulae are often wrong.
I’m only 5’0 and female. It sucks and has sucked my entire life! Nothing fits right off the rack. Everyone thinks you’re younger than you are. Guys you like equate you with their little sister. When I was younger I never heard the end of “you’re just so cute”. Usually accompanied by a few pats on top of my head. I hated that word. Puppies are cute. Kittens are cute. Grown adults are not cute. And stop petting me!
I guess once you’re old you’re no longer cute.
But to the OP, remind him there are people dealing with much much worse. We’re all unique and everyone has things they don’t like about themselves.
I had a friend in high school who was 4’10. She was on a college interview at a restaurant, and the waitress brought her a children’s menu.
She got in anyway-- they were actually impressed with her poise. She was a straight-A student, and it was one of the seven sisters colleges. She said she almost cried when the waitress did that, though. I can’t imagine.
She grew a little more, and made it to 5’0, but she is very petite, and still hates it. She complains that women who are over 5’7 aren’t afraid to walk to their cars alone after dark, and she has to be cautious all the time. She’s afraid to take a ground floor apartment, and a hundred other little things a small woman has to worry about.
It doesn’t. Especially in the context of enrolling in a class, which had to clue her in on his age.
On another MB I post to sometimes, there is someone who has a child with a form of dwarfism, and people are always telling him to his face that he is cute or adorable. I suppose they think they are helping him feel better about himself, because he probably thinks he’s ugly, but they are actually subtly insulting him by using terms one would use for a toddler. I’ve known a couple of people with different forms of dwarfism, and it usually isn’t difficult to see that you are dealing with a teen or adult who is a dwarf, and not a child, not to mention, if they speak a few words to him, they can tell more or less how old he is, so I doubt they are actually mistaking him for a two or three year old.
The sled guy was way out of line. How young could your son possibly look? Unless he looked younger than eight, and I find it hard to believe he looked that young, I wouldn’t think sledding alone would be dangerous. He’s probably a helicopter parent, and I feel for his kids.
You had a chance to educate her, having son wait in the hall a moment. “I’m his Mom and will always find him adorable and cute but you see, just now he’s a 14 yr old male who’s feeling self conscious over his height and ‘cute/adorable’ will ruin his day. I know you meant well and all, so I just thought I’d share a little, have a nice day!”
Then to the son; “Next time someone calls you adorable or cute tell them small furry animals are cute, whereas you are as mighty as Thor!”
Flip side of the coin here. As a woman of a certain age, guys young enough to be a son or (gasp!) a grandson will sometimes be referred to as a cutie-patootie or some such phrase. I likely wouldn’t have used the words that the woman at the school used, but I may have commented, moreso if he had a sweet, polite and/or bubbly personality.
I seriously doubt that it was meant the way that it was interpreted.
So what formula is that? I’m curious if my sons will be monstrous tall or just normal height, since my wife and I are both over 6’ (I’m 6’1" and she’s 6’2")
It’s perfectly normal for him not to feel good about that. He’s only in high school and hasn’t grown that thicker skin yet. Not that a thick skin provides full protection or anything.
I tower over you at 5’2, and I agree that some aspects of it are annoying, but are you seriously saying that being a 5’0 woman sucks as much as being a 5’4 guy? Besides, at least we can get our pants hemmed. Mrs. bump probably has to wear ankle boots with her “tall” jeans.*
They will be pretty tall. Your wife’s height is more important in this than yours. You are “normal tall,” so to speak, while she is “unusual tall,” considering your respective genders. Your sons get normal-tall genes from you, and unusual-tall genes from their mother. They will probably be taller than both of you.
I know a married couple where the husband is 6’2, and the wife is 6’0. Their sons are 6’4 and 6’6.
My son is 4’5.5 at age 7. But his father had an unusual growth pattern-- he was always a head taller than the rest of his class through the 8th grade, then he never had an adolescent growth spurt. He went into high school already 5’9, and grew just five more inches, slowly, over the next four years. So DS will probably end up around 6’2, like his father. At least I hope so. At the rate he’s growing now, he could potentially end up almost 7 feet tall, if he does something like add six inches in one year in high school.
I’m not looking forward to the food bills when DS is a teenager.