Back to School - Back to Headaches?

September already! It's hard to believe, but school has started and moms have become chauffeurs, driving the kids to soccer practice, football practice, piano class, dance class, band practice, and the library. I'm sure I missed something there.

Summer vacataion may have been relatively headache free, at least for kids who don't have allergies, but school stress and exposure to countless illnesses brought to school by classmates mean your child is likely to have headaches now, even if they are simply ones caused by fever or an ear infection.

Researchers in Finland have been looking into children's headaches and they've come up with the finding that kids who have chronic headaches are more sensitive to pain than other kids.

They studied children with tension headaches or migraine and compared them with a control group of children who didn't have chronic headaches. They think the kids may have learned this from their parents, and noted these kids were more likely to have a poor family environment. The kids also showed less exuberance during play for fear of getting hurt, and were more likely to be depressed. Well, I don't know how much of that I believe.

That particular study aside, though, about 75% of kids have a headache now and then. In many cases, of course, the cause is sinusitis. In others, there is a family history of migraine and the child is just starting to have them early. Cluster headaches can start as early as the teen years. Other causes of severe headache can be ruled out fairly quickly in a child.

Anxiety about school can be the root of many headaches, and that isn't limited to classroom problems. Issues such as being the playground bully's favorite victim, changing to a new school and feeling friendless, suddenly finding they are taller (or shorter) than anyone in their class, or maybe everyone else has obviously entered puberty and they haven't - any of these can be the basic cause of the problem. Parents need to be sensitive to the fact that issues that seem small to an adult can be absolutely earthshaking to a child.

One treatment you may not have considered for your child is antidepressants. However, tricyclic antidepressants can be of some help for a child going through a tough time and having chronic severe headaches as a result.

You may not recognize headaches as being caused by sinusitis, even if you know about sinus problems all too well, because sinusitis in children may have completely different symptoms than it does in an adult. For instance, it may be painless in a child and just cause postnasal drip or a runny nose, or there may be pain with pressure on the area of the sinus cavities but no discharge, or there may simply be a headache.

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