How much should the average 4-year-old weigh?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was at Kids R Us today buying a birthday gift for a friend’s son. The saleslady was helping me out since I have no idea how to buy kid’s clothes, and as we’re talking about what I should get and I’m trying to estimate height and weight, this other woman comes up and starts recommending various items. This lady sounds like she knows from children’s clothing, and she mentions she has a 4-year-old son. Well okay, the kid I’m buying for is 3, so I ask her what she prefers for dressing her son.

“Oh, I only shop here for my daughter. I shop in the young men’s department at Macy’s for my son”, she says.

A little confused, I ask why.

“Oh, well, he’s a big boy and nothing here really fits him anymore. He weighs almost 80 lbs. now.”

Uh, what? Is this normal? How can this possibly be normal? I just smile and say “Oh” in a polite way. The gears in my head are grinding feverishly, trying to figure out how a 4-year-old child could possibly weigh 80 lbs.

The saleslady hears this and goes very quiet. I pick out a cute little shorts set with a lion on it and the 80-pound-baby-lady nods approvingly. She leaves and the saleslady and I head for the counter to check out.

“Did you hear that?” she asks me.

“Uh-huh. That’s not, um…normal, is it?” I ask her.

“God, no! I wonder if the poor kid’s got a medical condition or something.”

So I take my stuff and head home, thinking to myself, “80 lbs? That can’t be healthy, can it? Thyroid condition maybe?”

So, could this possibly be normal? How much should a 4-year-old weigh? This lady sounded proud of this fact. Now, I know parents like to talk about how their kids are growing, and a lot of parents seem proud when their child is bigger or taller than average. (“Gonna be a basketball/football player when he grows up!” is what I hear a lot.) But what the hell? Apparently this was significantly unexpected to warrant a complete stranger (saleslady) making a shocked comment to another complete stranger (me) about still a third complete stranger, (80-pound-baby-lady) which violates good manners and professionalism. Now, I guess the saleslady could just have been a rude old gossip, but still…80 freakin’ pounds?!

2

80 is way too much for a 4 year old. Example - my 10 year old is overweight at 100 lbs. And on my 5’ tall, 10 year old, it looks heavy!
A 4 year old should not weigh more than 40 pounds at 40 or so inches high. I think 30-35 pounds would actually be the norm.

3

Yes, I can confirm: 40 pounds and 40 inches @ 4 years. But, I have a girl. Still, I believe the saying is true for boys, too, at this age! - Jinx

4

On the other hand, how big was Shaq at that age?

5

No. it’s not normal. My son has always been a head taller than his peers and 80 lbs at 3-4 would have been absurd. It’s either a freakaziod super large child thats going to 7 feet + when he’s grown or more likely (much more likely) one that is both over fed and has a metabolic problem.

6

WTF? 80 pounds? 4 years old?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

That is seriously fucked up, man.

7

My 4 yr. old boy was 38lbs at his recent 4 yr. old checkup. The pediatrician said this put him at 75th percentile for weight which surprised me because A)he’s always come out dead average at 50th percentile for everything B) he’s still at 50th for height C)the kid still eats NOTHING D)he still looks skinny.

So if 38 lb. was 75th percentile, 80 lbs. is outrageous.

Maybe she said 14 year old son? (of course 80lb would be really small then right?) Maybe she mispoke? I often have a brain freeze when people ask me how old my kids are or what their birthdays are.

8

My daughter is 4 and a half. Shes a BIG girl, but in a height kinda way, not a fat kinda way. She weighs 4.2 stone (54lb’s) and is 47 inches tall. She’s perfectly in proportion, shes just a big healthy girl! She wears clothes for children aged 8-9.

80lb’s would be obscene.

9

Just knowing how heavy the kid is and not how tall makes this assessment difficult. 80 sounds like a lot but I don’t know…

my daughter turned two last week. She’s 34 pounds and 38 inches tall. She fits perfectly into a 4T and has been hell to dress lately as she outgrew all her winter stuff a month or so before the warm weather hit! I’m always having problems with people assuming she is older than she is or giving me advice about how to raise her.

Oh and another thought. When I was 11 I weighed 80 pounds and was rail skinny. Through the magic of modern medicine they diagnosed me with an aggressive kidney disease that required steroids to treat. One year later I was 150 pounds from the stupid things. Maybe he has something else going on in his life?

10

I’m on board with tanookie. My “little” one just turned five and she is more than 4 feet tall and weighs over 60 lbs. Without knowing how tall the kid is there is no way to tell how overweight he is.

The problem with buying clothes for kids who get big young is that it is almost impossible to get clothes that fit. 4-5 year olds are proportioned differently than older kids. Their legs and arms are shorter as compared to their torsos. So clothes that would fit a 4 foot tall eight year old do not fit a 4 foot tall five year old. We have been reduced to buying clothes designed for older kids and then tailoring them to fit her. Good thing the wife sews. So if this woman has a child who is tall for his age she may have just found a place that sells clothes that actually fit.

80 lbs is probably at least a little over weight but I wouldn’t assume the kid is a blob. My daughter was over 60 lbs before she turned five but she is not even a little fat, just big.

11

My friend was 3ft tall at one and a half and 60 lbs- she just looked like an older kid. Now she is 6’0 and would kill me if I listed her weight:D But my point is, unless you know how tall the kid is its hard to tell.

12

Another point I forgot to mention. Mussle weighs more than the same amount of fat. My daughter had a playmate when she was two. The other little girl was three, almost exactly a year older. They were alomst exactly the same hight and to look at them you would think they would weight about the same. But my daughter weighed about 10 pounds more than her friend. She is the only two year old I have ever seen with muscle definition. I was always supprised when I would pick up her friend because it felt like she was as light as a feather.

My daughter is not large framed. I can easily imagine a child her height who has a larger frame weighing ten more pounds than she.

13

My son is medium to lightweight for his size. He just turned 4. I am not sure what he weighs, but it’s certainly less than 40 lbs. However, I know some kids who are built like BRICKS. They look normal, but they are extremely heavy. I think the 2 1/2 year old at my son’s daycare weighs more than my son. And once I went to help my friend’s five-year-old on the playground and nearly gave myself a hernia. She apologized for not warning me.

It would be easy for me to believe that build and anatomy, therefore, could contribute to a kid’s weighing a lot without being obese. But could it account for the full 80lbs? Hard to believe.

14

Heh. That’s my kid all the way. He’ll be two this weekend, and he’s quickly surpassng 35 pounds. He’s a bit tall for his age, but mostly he’s just dense. Doesn’t look like a porker, but watch your back when you try to lift him up!

If anyone’s interested in actual “normal” values, here’s a link to a set of charts that seem to be saying that a 4 year old boy at the extreme end of the “stature” range (about 3.8 feet tall) should weigh about 45 pounds. Take from that what you will.

15

The boy is almost twice the weight of the outliers on CDCs chart. Unless the boy is 4’5, he’s HUGE!

But not as big as this 120lb three year old who was removed from her parent’s custody. I dunno but it seems to be this little girl has some sort of medical problem. I wonder if taking her from her home is the answer.

16

Another data point: My son is 3.5 years old, and weighs 37 pounds. I think he’s slightly heavy, but everyone else (including the ever-watchful grandparents) insist he’s fine.

To be fair, he is rather tall for his age; I have to shop for 4- and 5-year-old clothes to get something that’d fit him.

80 pounds for a 4-year-old is just insane.

17

My seven year old is BIG and he doesn’t weigh eighty pounds!

Zev Steinhardt

18

My 3.5 year old daughter is big for her age (weight and height proportionate). She weight 11 lbs. 14 oz., 23" long at birth, and has followed that curve all along. She is above the 100th percentile on height and weight. She weighs 42 pounds and wears a size 5 (the bitch of it is, size 5 clothes are very hard to find. Most often, the sizes go from 4 right to 6/6x, which is too big for her).

19

Update on how big my daughter really is. I had not weighed her in a couple of months. Let me restate that she turned five in March. We measured her this weekend and she is about 49 or 50 inches tall and weighs 69 lbs.

According to the data I was able to find online this is the average height of an eight year old and the avarage weight of a ten year old. But she is in no way obese. She isn’t even fat. She still has a little tummy. but at five that really is just baby fat. I will see if I can put a photo up that I can link to.

I just want to get it through to some people who were posting here that while the child in the case in question may well have been unhealthily overweight it is not a fair assumption that any young child that weighs this much is a porker. There are outliers on every bell curve.

If all you knew was that my five year old wieghs 70 lbs. you would probably go “Ewww!” but if you met her you would see she is just a big strong healthy kid.