If you want to know how to get taller at 10 years old so that you can maximize the height development of your ten year old son or daughter, then this article is for you.
At the age of 10, most girls and boys haven’t yet begun puberty, meaning that they still have years of opportunity to add inches to their stature.
Related Growing Guides:
- Average height for a 10 year old
- How to be tall
- How to increase height at 11
- How to increase height at 12
- How to increase height at 13
- How to increase height at 14
- How to increase height at 15
- How to increase height at 16
- How to increase height at 17
- How to increase height at 18
How to get taller at 10 years old for boys and girls
Between the ages of 10 and 11, ten year old boys and girls will both gain around 3 inches of height on average. This section includes 6 healthy tips that will help you to give your 10 year old the best possible chance of growing tall.
Avoid calorie restriction
Although height is primarily determined by one’s genetics, nutrition-related factors also affect how much a person grows. [1]
The growing body of a ten year old needs energy to carry out its many complex and internal processes.
This is why, unless instructed by a doctor, you should not restrict a 10 year old’s caloric intake. Height increase is naturally accompanied by weight gain, so if your ten year old’s body mass has stagnated, you might want to give them an extra snack or larger portions.
As you probably know, 10 year olds need plenty of physical activity for optimal health, so it’s extremely important that they eat enough food. This way, they’ll have plenty of energy to run around and get their growth hormone pumping.
Exercise every day
A ten year old needs at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day. But there’s certainly no harm in them doing more exercise than this if their diet and sleep are both on point.
Sports have long been recognized as one of the best ways for a 10 year old to get their recommended amount of physical activity while having fun in the process. [2]
When they play sports, kids learn to socialize and cooperate with others, which are just some of the many positive benefits that come with regular exercise and sporting practice.
Eat a wide variety of nutritious foods
Some parents choose to let their kids eat junk food as a treat. Whether or not this is ideal, such foods should certainly not be part of a 10 year old boy or girl’s daily diet.
Instead, you want to build good nutritional habits with your 10 year old by giving them nutrient-dense foods.
Some good techniques for food selection are to give your son or daughter fruits and vegetables of different colors (blueberries, oranges, cabbage, bananas, strawberries) so that they can get a wide variety of vitamins and minerals.
Additionally, we don’t recommend avoiding a particular macronutrient, such as carbohydrates or fats.
In the adult world, especially online, people often think of fats and carbs as either/or.
And while low-fat or low-carb diets may have their place for adults, a growing 10 year old shouldn’t arbitrarily restrict their food intake.
So make sure that your ten year old gets their healthy fats from foods like fatty fish, pasture-raised poultry, avocado, and perhaps also nuts and seeds.
Stick to healthy carbohydrate sources like oatmeal (which goes great with fruit) and potatoes.
Don’t worry about height
While some children start puberty at the age of 10 and even earlier, most girls don’t start puberty until age 11, and most boys don’t begin puberty until roughly age 12.
So if your 10 year old isn’t yet as tall as their peers, you shouldn’t panic.
If they have the genetics to be tall and their sleep, diet, and exercise are taken care of, then those genetics will become apparent once they begin puberty.
Also, if your child has a late birthday, then there’s a good chance that they’ll naturally be shorter than their peers, who may well have been growing for 6+ months more than them.
Of course, if you’re really concerned about your 10 year old not growing taller, then you might want to talk with a pediatrician.
Prioritize sleep
Like exercise, sleep leads to the secretion of growth hormone, meaning that it can affect the height of a child who’s going through puberty.
A 10 year old boy or girl needs around 9 to 11 hours of sleep per 24 hours to grow tall and healthy.
With this in mind, it’s a good idea to help your ten year old wind down an hour or so before going to bed so that they can be in a relaxed state before they go to sleep.
Don’t take shortcuts
As with just about any physical attribute that is of concern to people, there are supposed quick fixes out there that can allegedly make people taller and increase the height of children.
And while some supplements along these lines may have beneficial effects if they contain quality nutrients that children are often deficient in, you should typically steer clear of any kind of “height-increasing” products.
As I’ve explained throughout this article, optimizing your 10 year old boy or girl’s diet, exercise routine, and sleeping schedule will enable them to maximize their individual height genetics.
Unless your child genuinely has a growth hormone deficiency, it’s unlikely that they’ll need to take anything other than perhaps vitamin D (depending on the season and the weather where you live) and a trace mineral supplement, depending on their diet quality.
Can a 10 year old have a growth spurt?
Yes, if a 10 year old is going through puberty, then they can definitely have a growth spurt and grow substantially taller in a relatively short space of time.
Peak growing velocity, in terms of inches per year, occurs at around age 13 for boys and at roughly age 11 for girls. There is, of course, a large amount of individual variation to this trend.
You definitely shouldn’t try to force your 10 year old to have a growth spurt—not that it’s possible to do such a thing—by exaggerating their lifestyle factors, e.g., making them eat as much as possible and do extremely intense exercise every day.
As long as your ten year old child has good nutrition, gets plenty of exercise and sleeps well, then they’ll already be doing more than the majority of their peers when it comes to growing taller.
Indeed, research shows that children these days are becoming more sedentary and have less muscular fitness, which is why your child should ideally do resistance training as well as aerobic exercise. [3]
Resistance training at the age of 10 can be as simple as doing push-ups on the knees, bodyweight squats, and burpees.
The verdict on increasing the height of a 10 year old
Most 10 year olds will get taller by around 3 inches between the ages of 10 and 11. As mentioned, a child’s genetics can greatly affect this rate of growth, so not every ten year old will experience the exact same height increase.
With that said, I hope that our guide on how to get taller at 10 years old gave you some helpful advice for maximizing your 10 year old girl or boy’s physical development.
References
- Addo, O. Y., Stein, A. D., Fall, C. H., Gigante, D. P., Guntupalli, A. M., Horta, B. L., Kuzawa, C. W., Lee, N., Norris, S. A., Prabhakaran, P., Richter, L. M., Sachdev, H. S., Martorell, R., & Consortium on Health Orientated Research in Transitional Societies (COHORTS) Group (2013). Maternal height and child growth patterns. The Journal of pediatrics, 163(2), 549–554. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2013.02.002
- Cairney, J., Clark, H. J., Kwan, M., Bruner, M., & Tamminen, K. (2018). Measuring sport experiences in children and youth to better understand the impact of sport on health and positive youth development: designing a brief measure for population health surveys. BMC public health, 18(1), 446. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-018-5325-9
- Sandercock, G., & Cohen, D. D. (2019). Temporal trends in muscular fitness of English 10-year-olds 1998-2014: An allometric approach. Journal of science and medicine in sport, 22(2), 201–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2018.07.020