The child suddenly has leg pain and cannot walk

Many parents have reported that their children have been crying in pain recently, but there are no scars on their legs, and no illness was found after going to the hospital for a check-up, so the matter has been left unresolved. Sometimes when children are playing outside, they suddenly have leg pain and cannot walk, which scares their parents. In fact, if the child's legs do not have any scars or diseases, the cause of leg pain may be growing pains. Let's learn about what growing pains are.

1. What are growing pains?

Growing pains refer to pain around the knee joint or the front of the calf in children. There is no history of trauma to these areas, the activities are normal, and there is no redness, swelling or tenderness in the local tissues. Growing pains are mostly physiological pains caused by children's relatively large amount of activity, rapid growth of long bones, and the lack of coordination with the growth and development of local muscles and tendons. The clinical manifestations are mostly lower limb muscle pain, which often occurs at night.

2. Pain manifestations

1. Mostly pain in the lower limbs

The most common sites of occurrence are the knee, calf, front of the thigh, and occasionally in the groin area, and the pain is usually outside the joint. Typically the pain is bilateral, but in some cases it is unilateral.

2. Mostly muscle pain

The pain is mostly muscle pain, not joint or bone pain. There will be no redness, swelling or heat in the painful area.

3. Pain often occurs at night

The biggest feature is that it almost always happens at night. Because children are very active during the day, even if they feel uncomfortable, they may not notice it because they are focused on other things. At night, when the body and mind relax, the pain symptoms will make the child feel uncomfortable or even unbearable.

3. Comparison of growing pains and pathological pain

Not all leg pain is growing pain. Pathological leg pain is often accompanied by other symptoms. You can refer to the following:

Growing pains: muscle pain, intermittent pain;

Juvenile arthritis: red and swollen joints, migratory joint pain (pain location may change)

Bone cancer: The pain lasts for a long time and is of high intensity;

Sprain or fracture: pain when pressing, redness and swelling at the fracture site;

Childhood leukemia: high fever, anemia, pale complexion, bone and joint pain, etc.;

The above diseases are most easily confused with growing pains. Experts suggest that children’s concept of pain is often only the feeling of pain, and they cannot clearly tell the symptoms of pain. Therefore, once a child often complains of leg pain, be sure to go to the hospital for examination and confirmation! To eliminate pathological pain.

4. How to relieve real growing pains

If it is really "growing pains", generally no special treatment is required. The most effective way to deal with pain is to give the child local massage and hot compress to help relieve the pain and give the child a sense of psychological care and security. The specific method is as follows:

1. Distract Your Attention

Distracting the child's attention is an effective way to help him ignore the pain. Parents can attract their children by telling stories, playing games, playing with toys, watching cartoons, etc. It is necessary to treat sick children with more tenderness and care than usual, because the encouragement and moral support from parents are the most important pain relief remedies for children.

2. Local hot compress and massage

Family members can use a hot towel to massage or apply hot compresses to the painful area of ​​the child. This can ease the child's tension and thus relieve the discomfort caused by the pain. When massaging, be sure to pay attention to the strength of kneading and let the child fall asleep under the gentle touch.

3. Reduce strenuous exercise

Growing pains are not a disease and there is no need to restrict the child's activities. However, if the pain is severe, the child should be allowed to rest more in the near future, reduce exercise appropriately, relax muscles, and avoid strenuous activities.

4. Nutritional Supplementation

Children should consume more nutrients that can promote the growth of cartilage tissue, such as milk, bones, walnuts, eggs, etc. Vitamin C is beneficial to collagen synthesis, so children can eat more vegetables and fruits rich in vitamin C, such as green vegetables, leeks, spinach, citrus, grapefruit, etc.

Whether it hurts or not has nothing to do with height

When growing children have leg pain, many parents will associate it with calcium deficiency. But in fact, calcium supplementation has nothing to do with growing pains. Children with sufficient calcium may also experience growing pains, and calcium supplementation is not very helpful in relieving growing pains. There is no relationship between growing height and growing pains. Having growing pains does not necessarily mean that you will grow tall. Children without growing pains may also grow very tall.