Diminutive height does not restrict kids’ psychological well-being or hamper their relationships with peers.“ Children who are small in stature show no more social problems than children of any other part of the height spectrum,” says Dr.William Bukowski, a psychology professor at Concordia University in Montreal. Collaborating with researchers at the University at Buffalo, N.Y., Bukowski studied roughly 950 kids in Grades 6 to 12 from a middle-class Buffalo suburb. The kids’ heights were carefully measured, and subjects were defined as short if their height fell below that of 97% of other kids of the same age and sex (their projected adult height was a maximum of 4 foot 9 for females and 5 foot 2 for males).
Next, all kids were rated by their teachers, their peers and themselves for indicators of psychosocial well-being or maladjustment—aggressive or withdrawn behaviour, feeling picked on or anxious, or characteristics such as helpfulness and likeability. Although short kids were unsurprisingly perceived as looking younger, they showed no less social competence than their tall or average-height peers. Both tall and short kids were about 1% less dominant than average kids. The lack of a link between well-being and height challenges both conventional wisdom and the rationale for giving diminutive kids daily injections of growth hormone, which is now available in artificial form. “This treatment adds only 1 1⁄ 2 to 2 1⁄ 2 inches on average to a person’s height and is invasive and costly—$30,000 a year,” says Bukowski.“ And if it’s not related to psychosocial adjustment, why give it?”
