{"id":806588,"date":"2026-10-18T13:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T13:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/806588\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T13:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T13:02:10","slug":"smaller-babies-perform-poorer-as-teens-university-of-warwick-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/806588\/","title":{"rendered":"Smaller babies perform poorer as teens, University of Warwick study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Babies who are smaller than expected at birth tend to have poorer school performances as teenagers, <a href=\"https:\/\/warwick.ac.uk\/news\/pressreleases\/babies-who-are\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a study has found, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">More than 92,000 children were followed from infancy to adolescence, all of whom were born at full term, between 37 and 41 weeks pregnant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The researchers at the University of Warwick found that children who weighed less than most babies of the same sex, born at the same stage of pregnancy, tended to achieve lower scores in subjects like mathematics and reading.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The differences were still apparent in adolescence, suggesting that the link between size at birth and academic performance persists well beyond early childhood into mid-teens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;For babies born at term, being small for their stage of pregnancy may indicate adverse effects on the brain that affect learning and last into adolescence,&#8221; Prof Dieter Wolke said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, he said the long-term effects of being born small may be altered by parenting home stimulation and school support.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His colleague Prof Siobhan Quenby said not every baby born smaller than expected would experience difficulties, but the study&#8217;s results underlined the importance of &#8220;monitoring a baby&#8217;s growth and ensuring that children receive appropriate support as they develop&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Babies who are smaller than expected at birth tend to have poorer school performances as teenagers, a study&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-806588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}