Headaches in children
Headaches in children are somewhat different to headaches in adults. To begin with, children often have an ache in the abdomen, rather than the head, during fevers - so a child going down with a mild flu-like illness will complain of a tummy-ache. In an adult this would be a headache. This phenomenon is quite marked, and the younger the child the more likely they are to complain of abdominal rather than head pain in generalised infections.
This is particularly true in the case of non-specific illnesses such as viral infections, urinary tract infections, and so on. It makes diagnosis more difficult, of course, because many abdominal illnesses can also cause abdominal pain, and these have to be excluded from the diagnosis.
A useful point is that a tummy-ache that is really a 'headache in disguise' is always felt around the middle of the abdomen. When asked where it hurts, the child will always point to his navel. Some abdominal illnesses can also cause central abdominal pain, so it doesn't exclude other things; however, what you can confirm is that if abdominal pain is somewhere other than the navel, then it's unlikely to be caused by a temperature/infection alone. To make matters even more complex, not all children perceive general pain in the tummy - some have headaches, just as adults do. A useful rule of thumb is that the younger the child, the more a headache is likely to mean something other than just a mild infection.
A specific variety of this perception of abdominal pain is abdominal migraine. This behaves almost exactly like migraine, except that the pain is centred in the abdomen rather than the head. It has the same time span as an ordinary migraine, and seems to be a childhood equivalent.
The second reason why children get different types of headaches from adults is because children suffer from a different range of illnesses to adults. This means: more fevers, more tumours, fewer neck injuries, hardly any strokes and no menstrual or pre-menstrual problems before puberty. Eye problems and, behavioural problems also cause specific difficulties in childhood. The pattern of children's headaches reflects these differences.
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