by Crystal Shimo

Created on: August 09, 2009

Crying was heard in the next apartment, with neighbors knocking on the door to make sure that everything was alright. My daughter who was only one year old at the time was hurting, and crying to tell me she was hurt. Her vocabulary was good for her age, but she couldn't actually tell me that her head was hurting. I finally found out that her head was hurting when I put her in a warm bath and she had calmed down to just a whimper.

When she finally calmed down to where she could hear me over her own cries, I asked her where she felt the owies, and she held her head. Calling her pediatrician, I learned the dosage of her children's tylenol and gave it to her. Within twenty minutes, my whimpering toddler was giggling and laughing, and wanting to go outside for a walk, which I was glad to give her.

As she's grown, she has learned to say her head hurts whenever she has a headache, and asks for medicine for it. I firmly believe that children have headaches and even migraines. The causes of headaches in children can be the same as in adults. Of course, with babies, the only way to communicate is through crying, laughing, etc. they tend to give themselves headaches more often than outside sources.

My own memories of being a child, I remember having frequent headaches that my mother never believed were crippling. My eyes would hurt, I didn't like being outside because of the brightness of the sun. I didn't like taking any medicine, but a lot of times, I didn't have a choice. If I were to be able to do my homework, or go to school, I needed to be able to think, and the headaches didn't help. Of course, when I was under ten, mom would have to be the one to give me the medicine, which she always refused to do because she thought I was exaggerating how much my head hurt.

If your child complains that their head hurts, or your baby cries or whimpers a lot while holding their ears or head, tell their pediatrician. Children do tend to exaggerate when it comes to their boo-boos, but there is usually a thread of fact in their stories and their hurts. When it comes to children, it is better safe then sorry, take their comments about hurting seriously enough to check it out at least. It is better to tell their pediatrician about frequent headaches and have the doctor check the child out than find out at a later time that the child had a serious problem that went unnoticed because the parent thought the child was faking it.

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