Growing Pains: Real or fabricated?

My sweet four-year-old has spent the week reminding me of what it’s like to have a newborn. He’s been waking me up with screams for the last three nights writhing with leg pain. Last night had to be the worst, as we were awake at 2:30, 3:45 and then 5 a.m. I’d rush to his bed where I’d find him curled in a ball gripping his feet and knees alternately saying, “They huuurrrt, Mommy. They hurrrrrrt.”

This is where Jeremy’s hearing impairment comes in handy. He was oblivious to it all.

So I’d stretch out his legs and massage them until he stopped crying, and last night I gave him a little pain reliever to help. (He detests medicine and wrestles with me to ingest it, so that warranted even more crying.) Today I researched homeopathic options, which I’ll look into further tonight, because I can’t imagine endless doses of Tylenol or Ibuprofen night after night.

Speaking of research, I was struck by all the articles from physicians about growing pains being a falsehood, a fake diagnosis for general muscle fatigue in children. This bothered me because I remember having growing pains in my early teen years, being unable to rest at night because my legs ached, and no matter how much my mother would rub them, it wasn’t enough to penetrate my bones where the pain seemed to generate. I don’t have memories of leg pain as a child, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have them.

Whether or not growing pains are real are irrelevant to me. I believe they are, and this means I need to help my little man when he’s in pain. If any of you have advice, the comment box (and my email inbox) is open.

2 Comments

  1. Hey girl – try increasing his calcium intake – I use ground almonds sprinkled on yogurt… G did this also and increasing his calcium and upping his vit D3 turned it around in just a few days. Let me know what works at your house.

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