Kids Clothing Size Converter

In short European and Japanese children's sizes are not codes — they are the child's height in centimetres. A size 104 fits a child who is 104 cm tall, a 116 fits one who is 116 cm, and the steps are six centimetres apart up to about 116 and then six again to the teens. American and British sizes are the child's age instead: 4T, 5, 6, or "5–6 years". So converting between them is not arithmetic at all. It is a claim about how tall an average child of a given age happens to be, and that claim is wrong for a large minority of children in both directions — two healthy six-year-olds can differ by fifteen centimetres, which is two to three sizes on the European ladder. That is the whole reason a parcel from a European shop arrives too small for a tall seven-year-old who wears a UK "7–8 years" without trouble. The practical answer is to stop converting and start measuring: stand the child against a wall without shoes, take the height in centimetres, and buy that European number directly. If you must buy by age, buy up rather than down — trousers and coats tolerate growing room, and anything that has to fit at the shoulder does not. The table on this page gives the age each European size is nominally cut for, so you can see exactly how much of a guess an age-based size is before you make it.