Does Your Child have Physical Complaints without a Medical Explanation?

​It can be difficult as a parent when you can’t find answers to what is happening for your child. Your child may be struggling with stomach aches, shortness of breath, fatigue, headaches, or pain in joint/muscles. When there is no medical explanation, it is considered to be emotional distress manifesting as physical symptoms. That emotional distress may be anxiety, stress, or another mental health concern, and some children are more sensitive to this than others. For some children difficult experiences roll off their back, while for other kids no matter how hard they try they stick and it is harder to “shake them off”. Parents often wonder, what can I do to help my child? Here I share a few recommendations of where to start. 

1. Help Your Child Not Feel Alone: Sometimes parents wonder could my child be “faking this”, which can run through a person’s mind when they feel there is no explanation for what is happening. With emotions and mental health related concerns, they are not tangible like a broken bone that needs to be fixed, and they are invisible to the naked eye. What a child often needs is the presence of the parent and reassurance something is truly bothering them even if the doctors can’t find a reason.  
2. Monitor the Symptom(s): Being curious about when the symptom(s) shows up like a stomach ache, how intense it is, how long it lasts, and how often it appears – are all important pieces of information to guide support and next steps.
3. What helps it feel better, what makes it worse: from monitoring the symptoms you may start to gain more understanding about what makes it worse, and also understanding at times when it is less intense or doesn’t last being curious about what is happening or helping in these situations.
4. Build coping: this can take many forms. A good place to start is a previous article I wrote “Helping Your Child Express Their Feelings”.
5. Seek support: There are many options with therapy, and it is important to find the right approach for your child. It can be discouraging if you have tried therapy before for your child and it didn’t work, sometimes it is finding the right fit with the right therapist and other times it is about finding the right approach. Stay tuned in the month of May for an article about how EMDR may be able to help your child.