Growing Pains

Last night, Ladybug woke me up crying because her leg was hurting. And I felt I knew exactly what it was because I had them throughout my entire childhood (and even now sometimes): Growing Pains.

I used to wake my grandmother in the middle of the night, and she would give me a hot water bottle, a little massage and some Tylenol, and it would go away. So, as I'm massaging Sam's leg last night, I'm telling her what Growing Pains are, and that she's a growing girl now, and if she drinks lots of water and eats her veggies, she'll feel so much better.

In some crazy way, I felt like this was a rite of passage. She's no longer a baby or toddler, she's now a growing little girl. And as I was telling her how big she was getting, I thought about how this is what it will be like to talk to her when she gets her period -- a rite of passage into womanhood.

So, in this day and age with the World Wide Web at our fingertips, I searched for leg pains and growing pains in a 5-year old. I was AMAZED to discover that growing pains is a sort of "phenomenon" and that most pediatricians say "there is no such thing," and the pain could be because of a child's shoes, flat-footedness, or some other ailment. This was SHOCKING to me. First of all, I truly believed that EVERY CHILD had them (but I now discovered that even my husband says he never did). Second, do you mean that there isn't some "positive" reason for this pain? How disheartening! (But sadly, it does explain why they sometimes happen to me now, and on occasion throughout my adult life.)

Well, I won't be telling Ladybug about this fiasco, as I'm sure that this will not be the last of these leg aches. Of course, I will mention them to her pediatrician on our wellness visit next month, but I will always believe in Growing Pains.

Here's one of the articles I read about this:

http://www.rps.psu.edu/probing/growing.html