How to Print or Save a Growth Chart for Your Child's Doctor

Maybe you measured your child at home and want to show the numbers at the next check-up. Maybe you're switching doctors, or a nurse asked for a growth record. Either way, a single printed page with the measurements, the percentiles and the charts is easier to talk through than numbers on a phone.

This guide covers what's on a child's growth chart, which chart applies at which age, how to read a percentile without over-reading it, and how to print the report or save it as a PDF. A growth chart is a starting point for a conversation with your child's doctor, not a diagnosis.

What a growth chart shows

A growth chart plots a measurement against age, for boys or girls separately, with curved lines for the percentiles. The three you'll meet most:

Height-for-age (called length for babies, who are measured lying down).
Weight-for-age.
BMI-for-age, from age 2. BMI is weight in kilograms divided by height in metres squared. For children it's read against other children of the same age and sex, not against the adult categories. For babies under 2, doctors look at weight-for-length instead.

Which chart: WHO or CDC?

There are two families of charts, built in different ways:

Chart	Ages	What it describes
WHO Child Growth Standards (2006)	Birth to 5 years	How children should grow in good conditions. Built from about 8,500 children in Brazil, Ghana, India, Norway, Oman and the USA (the WHO Multicentre Growth Reference Study, 1997–2003).
WHO Growth Reference (2007)	5 to 19 years	A reconstruction of the older 1977 NCHS/WHO reference, using the same statistical methods as the standards.
CDC 2000 Growth Charts	2 to 20 years	How typical children in the US did grow during a specific period: a reference, not a standard.
CDC Extended BMI-for-age (2022)	2 years and up	For children with a very high BMI, above the 97th percentile, where the 2000 charts run out.

In the US, the CDC recommends the WHO charts from birth to age 2 and the CDC charts from age 2. Outside the US, clinics may use the WHO charts throughout or a national chart, so it's worth asking which one your child's doctor uses.

One practical detail: around age 2, children switch from being measured lying down to standing up. The CDC notes that standing height is about 0.8 cm (¼ inch) less than lying-down length, so a small dip in the height percentile at the switch is expected and isn't a change in growth.

What a percentile means

The CDC's definition: a percentile shows how a child's measurement compares with other children of the same sex and age in the reference group, as the percent of that group the child equals or exceeds.

An example, worked out with our growth calculator. A girl aged exactly 4, 103 cm tall and 16 kg:

Measure	Percentile	In words
Height-for-age	67th	As tall as or taller than about 67 in 100 girls her age
Weight-for-age	52nd	About the middle
BMI-for-age (BMI 15.1)	43rd	In the CDC's healthy-weight range (5th to below the 85th)

That's all a percentile says: where one measurement sits in a reference group on one day.

What a percentile doesn't mean

It isn't a score. The 50th percentile isn't a target, and the 20th isn't a fail. Healthy children are spread across the whole chart.
One point says little. The CDC's guidance for clinicians puts it plainly: growth monitoring is based on a series of accurate measurements over time. What doctors look at is whether a child keeps roughly to their own curve.
Small measuring errors move it. In the example above, measuring the same girl at 102 cm instead of 103 moves her height from the 67th percentile to the 59th. Measure carefully, and if a number surprises you, measure again.
Moving across the lines is what gets attention. A US Maternal and Child Health Bureau training module describes a common sign of growth faltering as dropping across two major percentile lines (for example from the 75th to the 25th) over a few months. If you see a change like that between measurements, mention it to your paediatrician; they'll know whether it matters for your child.

For BMI-for-age, the CDC uses these categories for ages 2 to 19, and calls BMI a screening tool, not a diagnosis:

BMI-for-age percentile	Category
Below the 5th	Underweight
5th to below the 85th	Healthy weight
85th to below the 95th	Overweight
95th or above	Obesity

If the numbers worry you, in either direction, that's exactly what the appointment is for. Your child's doctor can look at the whole picture: the earlier measurements, family heights, eating, sleep and health.

How to print or save the growth chart

Our Kids Growth Calculator uses the WHO standards up to age 2 and the CDC 2000 charts from 2 to 19, as the CDC recommends, and prints all of it as one report.

Enter the measurements. Choose boy or girl, then age in years and months, height and weight, in centimetres and kilograms or inches and pounds. The percentiles and the chart update as you type. Open the example above to see a filled-in one.
Open the result's ⋯ menu and pick "Print / Save as PDF". Pressing Ctrl+P (⌘+P on a Mac) does the same.
Check what's on the page. The report has a header with the inputs on one line, the date, and a link with a QR code; then the height-, weight- and BMI-for-age percentiles; every chart (height, weight and, from age 2, BMI), each with your child's point marked; a short guide to reading the bands; and the sources. It's printed in light colours whatever theme you use on screen, so it reads well in black and white.
Pick the paper. The report is laid out for US Letter or A4. It follows the Measurements choice in Settings → Units: US gives Letter, Metric gives A4, and Auto goes by your browser's language.
Print, or save a PDF. In the browser's print dialog, choose your printer, or choose Save as PDF as the destination to get a file you can email or upload to your clinic's patient portal.

The link and QR code on the report open the same measurements again, because they're stored in the link itself. Nothing is saved on our side, and the calculator doesn't need an account.

Keeping a record over time

Since one point matters less than the trend, save a PDF each time you measure, with the date in the file name, or simply write the date, height and weight on a list. At the appointment, the doctor can plot them all on the clinic's chart and see the curve.

Sources

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. What Growth Charts Are Recommended? Growth Chart Training.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Using WHO Growth Standard Charts (series of measurements; standing height vs. length).
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Growth Charts: What to Know (references vs. standards).
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Child and Teen BMI Categories.
Kuczmarski, R. J., et al. (2002). 2000 CDC Growth Charts for the United States: methods and development. Vital and Health Statistics, 11(246). cdc.gov
World Health Organization. WHO Child Growth Standards and the WHO Multicentre Growth Reference Study.
World Health Organization. Growth reference data for 5–19 years.
Maternal and Child Health Bureau. Using the CDC Growth Charts: Identifying Poor Growth in Infants and Toddlers. Training module, University of Washington.