Presented by: Sean O’Reilly, Aaron Logsdon, and Alex Perez Delayed Puberty Presented by: Sean O’Reilly, Aaron Logsdon, and Alex Perez

Challenges Facing Parents Being responsible for the individual, the parents must face the challenge of finding the community resources available to help overcome the individual’s challenge. The parents may have to resort to heavy investment in hormone therapy, or in some rare cases, surgery to correct anatomical problems. The parents may have to live with the fact that they genetically contributed to the individual’s height disorder.

Challenges facing child People tend to judge others by their appearance, usually by how they physically look. Age seems to be judged by the height of an individual. In “short” children, studies have shown that the challenge the child faces suggests he or she can behave immaturely, because they do not look their actual age. The tendency to be immature has been thought for a long time to be the major psychological difficulty facing delayed pubescent adolescents. Problems in social interactions and behavioral problems such as shyness, withdrawal or attention deficits are common among these children. It is common to find that the individual is unhappy in their social and work lives. The individual can also lack motivation, have a tendency to be shy, or a tendency to be withdrawn. Dominantly in males, it is socially unacceptable for an individual to be “shorter” than ones peers, according to various surveys that have been conducted.

Effects on Development The child’s problems may simply be because of his heredity, for instance the parents or relatives may have been “late bloomers”, just like he or she is, which would suggest a possibility of delayed puberty being present in his or her offspring. This is called constitutional delay. Delayed puberty can also result from inadequate gonadal steroid secretion or hypothalamic pituitary and gonadal disorders. Delayed puberty occurs in 2% of adolescents (I.E. 1 in 50) Chronic illnesses such as kidney disease, asthma, cystic fibrosis, and diabetes hinder body growth and development. A relatively simple cause could be malnourishment. Children with delayed puberty have an increased risk of osteoporosis. When the child is actually 14 or 15, his or her bone age could be 9 or 10.

Community resources available to help meet the challenge An endocrinologist can help by treating an individual’s growth problems. Hormone therapy can stimulate the hormone testosterone which induces puberty in males, although it is present in females as well. In very rare cases, surgery can be an option to repair anatomical problems. The proper combination of support, counseling, and medical treatment can have the potential to produce a better outcome than that of a “normal” height challenged individual.

(Climbing the positive arrow to normal height) The End (Climbing the positive arrow to normal height)