Short kids, tall kids—maybe everyone can get along after all! So say researchers in psychiatry and pediatrics who looked at whether being short or tall has an effect on a kid's social life.

What the researchers wanted to know: Does a child's height influence what peers think of them?

What they did: The researchers picked classrooms in grades 6 to 12 in a school district in upstate New York; each classroom had at least one child in the fifth percentile of height or shorter. They also looked at any kids in those classrooms who were in the 95th percentile or taller. Each short or tall child was compared to a classmate who was average height, and the same gender and race. Nearly 1,000 students in the 45 classrooms were asked how much they liked each of the other kids in their class. (That's the kind of data you don't want leaking out!) Each student also picked a kid in the class for each of a list of roles—like "is a good leader," "picks on others," "is a class clown," and "is not good at sports." The researchers used all of that information to figure out who was and wasn't well liked and what kids thought of one another.

What they found: There's no disadvantage to being short. One of very few significant effects they found was that, in the earlier grades, short kids look young to their peers. Well, duh. Short kids didn't have problems with popularity, leadership, isolation, or disruptiveness. Neither do tall kids.

What the study means to you: The researchers say that short children are often prescribed growth hormones, even if they have normal amounts of hormones already, because doctors and parents believe that the children will have social problems if they're super short. Well, maybe that belief is wrong.

Caveats: This was one middle-class, suburban school district in Western New York. Things could be different in other places.

Find out more: Growth charts from kidshealth.org

Read the article: Sandberg, D.E., Bukowski, W.M., Fung, C.M., and R.B. Noll. "Height and Social Adjustment: Are Extremes a Cause for Concern and Action?" Pediatrics. September 2004, Vol. 114, No. 3, pp. 744-750.

Abstract online: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/