A new study says that parents have difficulty with the data

Over the last couple of months, I have written a handful of posts that discuss children’s growth charts. According to an article in the medical journal Pediatrics (read full text here) that was released last week, understanding these charts is a challenge for most parents.

The study, which surveyed 1000 parents, assessed how well parents know about and understand children’s growth charts and whether they think they are helpful in tracking their children’s development. What they found was that many parents are familiar with growth charts that they see during their child’s visit to the doctor, but cannot understand the data.

When asked, 53% parents were able to identify all of the key features of a growth chart (age, weight, and percentile), but only one-third of parents also knew the definition of percentile. Percentiles are measurements that show how a child compares to children of their same age and gender.

Despite the fact that the charts themselves are not well-understood, parents do want a way to help them understand how their child is growing. The study found that 64% of parents thought it was important to be shown growth charts by a health care provider, and 31% reported plotting their children’s measurements on CDC-type growth charts at home.

Growth charts were originally developed to help health care providers track children’s growth and identify potential health problem. Recently, however, health organizations throughout the world, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO), have increasingly encouraged parents to become more aware of their children’s growth.

For parents to do this well, though, they need to be able to take and track their child’s measurements, monitor growth patterns, and understand how growth charts work.

To better understand some of these issues, please refer to the following sources:

SizeTracker Blog growth chart series

SizeTracker Growth Chart tool

Kids Health