Growing Pains

It’s the middle of the night, all is quiet in the household until your school aged child wakes up crying with leg/thigh pain. They are distressed, they don’t know what is going on apart from the fact that something hurts and it won’t go away. Can you feel the concern already? you’re trying not to look worried because you know that kids pick up on when you worry and then so do they. But you don’t know why they are hurting. After some gentle patting, maybe a massage, a heat pack or some medicine they go back to sleep but now what do you do? is this normal?

Something I hear a lot from concerned parents “is it growing pains?, but I never had growing pains?”. You’d assume that every child who grew would get growing pains, makes sense, but then this isn’t the case. In our clinic we often see children who are diagnosed with growing pains, but this is not an isolated condition. In fact, any child who has persistent pain with no cause should be seen by a healthcare practitioner because ongoing pain in a child is not normal.

But what are growing pains?

Growing pains is what we call a ‘generalised diagnosis’ for aches and pains in children, with no other cause. Experienced at specific times in their lives, it is believed to be associated with changes in bone to muscle length ratio usually seen with growth spurts or increases in activity such as that skipping competition for example. Usually it is experienced in the lower limb with aching occurring more often in the thigh, leg and front of the shin. Pain with vary in intensity, which comes and goes, and has no direct cause or injury associated with it.

The number of children I have seen in my experience who actually have “growing pains” are few, and perhaps that is because usually these periods of discomfort will not persist, the child will return to usual activities and the concern passes. Some things to be concerned about in children who have “growing pains” include:

• waking pain

• swelling/redness in joints

• persistant pain especially in the morning

• limping

• fever

• weakness/fatigue

• loss of appetite

It is important to see your regular practitioner if your child has any of these symptoms (The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne) to exclude other possible causes.

Should your child in fact have growing pains, usually a course of regular stretching, heat and massage will alleviate symptoms as prescribed by a physiotherapist such as Andy or myself. Piece of mind, when it comes to parenting, is worth so much and seeing a trained therapist to help you and your child has no monetary value in my book.

If you have further questions about growing pains, reach out to us via our social media platforms.

Sam and Andy