Growing Pains

& I ain't talking about Kirk Cameron...

I guess this all started about a year ago. Landon would wake up screaming after being asleep for a few hours. When we'd go in there, he'd complain of his knees or legs hurting. He'd grab them and sob about how bad they hurt. We'd rub them and finally get him calmed back down after 20 minutes and he'd go back to sleep. This would happen for a few nights in a row and then stop. A month or two would go by and it would start up again. And this has been happening ever since.

I didn't really know what was going on. At first I thought he was doing it for attention, especially since Carter was born around that time frame. Then I thought his leg was falling asleep. But none of that seemed quite right, especially since he was already asleep and this was waking him. It's not like he was doing it to get us to stay in his room while trying to go to sleep. But then Christopher said he had growing pains as a child. I thought he was nuts...these aren't real, right? Well I talked to his mom & she told me Landon's story but flash back to 25 years ago.

So I started doing some research and found that growing pains are real. They can occur in children around this age and typically happen in the first few hours of sleep for a few nights in a row. Children usually complain of pain around the main joints...knees and elbows. They tend to grow out of them in a year or so. The best thing to do is massage the area and give Tylenol/Ibuprofen.

I'd much rather deal with Kirk Cameron's cute little 1980s mullet than these real growing pains!