Short stature in children is defined as a child’s height being 2 standard deviations or below the 3rd percentile of the average height of a normal population of the same race, sex and age. That is, you can check the height standard deviation value table or height percentile value table to determine whether a child is short in height (shown below are the height and weight standard deviation unit value table for girls and the height and weight percentile value table for boys, respectively).