🦵🏽Growing Pains🦵🏽 15% (+/-) of children experience growing pains significant enough to require evaluation. It’s amazing that more children don’t when you consider how fast they grow! What are growing pains? We actually DON’T KNOW, but ❌not growth. More likely they are muscle cramps. Pains are ❌not always during periods of rapid growth and ❌ not more common in taller children. 😢Growing pains tend to be: symmetric / bilateral / both sides Most common 4-5 years old with a range from 3-9. Worse at the end of a busy day or at night. Felt in the legs, particularly after intense activity. Intermittent - most commonly they occur for a cluster of 3-5 days, then go away, then can come back lasting up to 3 months. 🛑The tricky thing about “growing pains” is that children with pain can have other serious medical problems that we don’t want to miss. 👩🏻‍⚕️ If you aren’t sure what’s going on and your child has pain please seek evaluation from your doctor. 🚩These features warrant further investigation (as it might be something else): 👀Something you can see - a rash, redness, swelling, or an abnormal gait. 🌡Something you can measure - Fever, weight loss. 😫Pain that is interrupting activity, severe, on one side, in the joints, or in the groin or back. Growth pains typically improve with: 💪🏻Massage and stretching legs ♨️Heating pad or warm bath 💊Tylenol or Motrin along with adequate hydration. 🦴Consider if the child has adequate calcium, vitamin d. 🛁Consider magnesium, either via Epsom salts in a bath or as a supplement such as a powder. Have your kids had growing pains? What helped?