system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 how does growing work?

Just wondered how does a person get taller and how does the body know when to stop? I know your bones arent the same at birth compared to an adult but how?
gpt
The simple answer is that the bones in your body have special regions near the joints called "growth plates". These are areas of cartilage that the bones can elongate off of, causing you to get taller until the plate fully turns into bone itself. This occurs around the later teens, generally around 13-15 for girls and 15-17 for boys. These are ballpark numbers though, some people stop earlier and some stop later. 

You can actually fracture across a growth plate and cause that bone to stop growing altogether.