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* These charts can be obtained from Creaseys Ltd., Bull Lane, Hertford. Two sizes are obtainable, the smaller designed to fit in hospital note folders and the larger double foolscap size for more accurate plotting.

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. (1970). Archives of Disease in Childhood, 45, 755. Standards for children's height at ages 2-9 years allowing for height of parents. Charts* are presented which give centile standards for boys' and girls' heights at ages 2 to 9 when parents' height is allowed for. Mid-parent height is used (i.e. the average of father's and mother's height).A comparison is made with results from the existing 'parent-unknown' British standard charts. A child at the 3rd centile on the parent-unknown charts is (i) at the 20th centile on the new charts if his parents are small enough to average 3rd centile for adults, (ii) at about the 1st centile if his parents average the 97th centile. Conversely a child with 97th centile parents has only to be at the 25th centile for the population in the parent-unknown charts to be at the conventional 3rd centile limit of normal when parental height is allowed for. Thus the new standards result in considerably increased precision.Examples are given of normal boys with small parents who piotted outside the 3rd centile on the conventional charts but inside on the present charts. The differential diagnosis of genetic small stature is made considerably more straightforward by the use of these charts.The correlation coefficients are given at successive ages, from 1 month to 9 years, for child's supine length or height with mid-parent height and for mother-daughter, mother-son, father-daughter, and father-son relationships.Current standards for the height attained by a child at a given age (e.g. Tanner, Whitehouse, and Takaishi, 1966) make no alowance for the height of his parents. We know, however, that tall parents in general produce tall children and short parents short children. If a child is at the 5th centile for height, therefore, it makes a considerable difference whether his parents are themselves 5th centile persons (in which case he is probably normal) or whether they are 95th centile persons (in which case he is almost certainly pathologicaUy small). This paper gives standards which allow for parental height. They apply at present only to children aged 2-0 to 9 0 years, since earlier and later ages require separate treatment. These standards are more powerful than the 'parentunknown' standards in the sense of being able to

Logistic curves have been fitted to the growth during puberty of the 55 boys and 35 girls of the Harpenden Growth Study who were measured every three months during puberty and thereafter until growth ceased. Very good fits were obtained for stature, sitting height, subischial leg length, biacromial and bi-iliac diameters from approximately six months after the beginning of the adolescent spurt. This beginning, called "take-off", was determined graphically as the point of minimum velocity. The total height gained from take-off point to cessation of growth averaged 28 cm in boys and 25 cm in girls with standard deviations of about 4 cm. The adult sex difference in height was due much more to the later take-off in boys than to a greater male adolescent spurt. A sex difference in the spurt occurred in sitting height but not in leg length. Mean-constant curves for the four measurements are presented. In each measurement size at take-off and total adolescent gain were nearly independent, the average correlation coefficient being --0-2. The correlations between adolescent gains in different measurements averaged only 0-47, and between peak velocities of different measurements only 0-27. This implies considerable shape change at adolescence. In contrast the average correlation between ages at which the peak velocities were reached was 0-87. Ages at take-off, at peak velocity, and at menarche were independent of mature size, though correlated with percentage of adult size reached at the ages in question, a measure of somatic maturity. Relationships with the development of breasts, pubic hair and genitalia were examined; ages at take-off and at peak velocity correlated to the extent of 0-6 to 0-8 with ages of B2 and PH2 but both these parameters and also peak velocities were uncorrelated with the rapidity with which sex characters developed.