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And many don't. In the survey, about half of parents said a child in the 10th percentile for height and weight was underweight. To doctors, the child's height and weight is proportional and probably no cause for concern, Ben-Joseph noted.

Many parents expressed concern about a child in the 25th percentile for height and weight year after year. About 16 percent said they would encourage the child to eat more and 18 percent said they didn't know what the information meant.

A child following a 25th percentile growth curve is smaller and lighter than average, but again, nothing to worry about, Ben-Joseph explained.

When reading growth charts, doctors tend to look for abrupt changes, such as a child whose height or weight trend suddenly drops off, which could be a sign of a problem. They also look for proportionality in height and weight.

A child with a height in the 10th percentile and weight in the 90th percentile is overweight, though about half of parents in a survey didn't realize this.

The confusion over growth charts brings up the larger issue of "numeracy" -- the numerical counterpart to literacy -- or the ability of patients to understand risk, statistics, graphs and charts used with increasing frequency in health care, said Dr. Goutham Rao, clinical director of the Weight Management and Wellness Center at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

"When a patient comes to a doctor's office or a health-care facility, there are specific numeracy skills they need to understand their condition and what transpires in the health-care environment," Rao said. "It's not just patients that can have trouble with this: physicians can also have difficulty putting numbers into terms patients can understand."

Even so, growth charts remain a useful tool for broaching the delic
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