ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Author(s) 2009. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Grip strength dynamometers often are used to assess hand function in children. The use of normative grip strength data at followup is difficult because of the influ-ence of growth and neuromuscular maturation. As an alternative, infant welfare centers throughout the world use growth diagrams to observe normative growth. The aim of this study was to develop similar growth diagrams for grip strength in children. We measured the grip strength, hand dominance, gender, height, and weight of 225 children, 4 to 12 years old. We developed separate statistical models for both hands of boys and girls for drawing growth curves. Grip strength increased with age for both hands. For the whole group, the dominant hand produced higher grip strength than the nondominant hand and boys were stronge