Do Children Grow Overnight?

Discussion Growth is an important vital sign for children. Normal growth patterns usually indicate healthy children and can be reassuring for both the parents and health care providers alike. Children are not usually measured very often by parents or health care providers and therefore the actual growth occurrence is not identified until after the event. Measuring small increments accurately also makes data collection difficult, along with the inconvenience of frequent serial measurements. A review of various growth parameters in children can be found here. Learning Point There is evidence that children do grow over very short periods of time. Rogol writes, “…[T]here is compelling evidence to invoke a pattern characterized by short saltations flanked by longer periods of stasis, both in infant and during the pubertal growth spurt.” When these saltations or periods of rapid growth are averaged over longer periods of time, it can look like growth is a continuous process. One adolescent male was measured almost daily for 389 consecutive days and was found to have linear growth on only 12 days. This is an average of ~1 day of growth out of 31, but the number of days between the growth days was heterogeneous ranging from 13-100 days. Another study of infants and toddlers, showed discontinuous growth spurts of 0.5-2.5 cm of linear growth separated by no measureable growth for 2-63 days. A third study of infants and toddlers, showed saltatory head circumference ...
Source: PediatricEducation.org - Category: Pediatrics Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: news