Parents, have your kids been complaining of knee pain?

Weather your kids are physically active or more incline to sit and play videogames, there is something inevitable: they’ll be growing and changing before your eyes. You may have noticed after family activities or when you tuck your children in at night, they have complaints like: “Mom, my legs are hurting”? Most people chalk it up to growing pains and they may not be wrong but what ARE growing pains??
Collin’s Dictionary describes growing pains to be “pains in muscles or joints sometimes experienced by children during a period of unusual rapid growth”. Great, but can something be done about it? Often parents of my teenage patients tell me they wish someone would have told them earlier in stead of watching their children suffer (is there something worst for a parent??!). Fortunately, if your pediatrician doesn’t help direct you as to concrete actions to do beside wait, you can ask a physical rehabilitation specialist like an Athletic Therapist.

Ok, here’s the core of the issue: Flexibility (elasticity of the muscles).

If you are the parent of an active and energetic child, this will make sense to you. Muscles in adults get tight when we use them a lot. We’ve all had experiences when we’ve exercised or done a repetitive movement at work or doing chores, having a muscle or a group of muscles that suddenly doesn’t
cooperate in length the day after, like suddenly the back of your thighs won’t let you tie your shoes after a long hike. Well same goes for children.
Muscles will tend to tight and lack elasticity especially in 3 cases:

1) Muscles that are weak relative to the demand on them:

When the muscles are asked to perform tasks that demand greater effort then they are used to (ex: doing a new exercise at the gym, or a seasonal task around the house that hasn’t been done in weeks).

2) Muscles that are too short:

When a muscle or group of muscles become strong with use but are never asked to lengthen, the tension that is chronically pulling on their attachments to the bones amount to bone spurs and potentially growth plate changes. (ex: Heals spurs are common in adults as well as fasciitis in the arch of the feet, but for active children, the shin splints are quite frequent as well as Osgood-Schlatter disease in the knee and Sever’s disease at the heel)\
3) Muscles that work outside of their normal use parameters:

When the range of motion of the joint is larger than they are used to or is the use is suddenly more strenuous then normal. (ex: when going up the stairs 2 at a time in stead of normally, or running outside for the first time after being used to running on a treadmill)
These 3 examples are an everyday affair for children who are growing. They’re building their base muscle mass while their bone length changes (sometimes incredibly fast for both boys and girls!!), pulling on the tendons and the bony attachments even while at rest. All of a sudden, their knees hurt, sometimes ankles and elbows as well (when we have children-athletes like gymnasts, tennis players, soccer players and hockey players to name a few, this is even more likely an occurrence and will be a challenge at every growth spurt they go through, into their teens). 

Flexibility! At this stage you’ve already built, through repetition (and let’s be honest, a lot of nagging), a few hygienic habits already. Why not gift them early on with the habit of stretching regularly. If you notice, as adults, bushing our teeth and all the other habits our parents instilled in us are ingrained and automated. Stretching after family activity together or supervising them stretching at home after doing sports is a gift that will keep on giving. Developing a positive relationship with flexibility activities will prepare their muscles to allow for changes in length while protecting them from pain and injury.
It is the job of medical doctors to diagnose problems but what if you could avoid the problems all together? Even if injuries occur, once diagnosis is made, the medical doctor’s job is mostly done and the next person to be able to help you will be allied healthcare professionals to help the healing along and reconstruct the appropriate function.

If this blog article speaks to you and you have questions, don’t hesitate to send me an email and ask! I have resources on our You Tube channel to guide you in helping your kids and like them, the list grows every day!

I hope this has helped you to make sense of some concerns that you may have!
Until next post, stay healthy and active!

Julie Bertrand, Certified Athletic Therapist
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