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Health in Plain

Growing Pains Symptoms: What the Pattern Looks Like

Growing pains are recurring aches in the muscles of both legs, arriving late in the day or after the child has been asleep an hour or two, and lasting roughly 10 to 30 minutes. The AAP puts them in about 10% of healthy children. The one thing they are not caused by is growing.

The five features that define the pattern

  1. Both legs, not one. The AAP says growing pains usually occur on both sides, not one side. The 2022 research definition goes further and requires pain in both legs — thighs and lower legs.
  2. Muscle, not joint. Calf and thigh muscles are the usual sites. Pain localized to a single joint is an exclusion.
  3. Late in the day or during the night. Never a morning complaint.
  4. Short. Usually 10 to 30 minutes, then gone.
  5. No limp, no lost activity. The definition requires no significant limitation of activity and no limping — the child runs normally the next day.

Between episodes the child is completely well. That gap is as diagnostic as the pain itself.

Why the name is a leftover

The AAP states it plainly: growth is not the cause, because even at the peak of an adolescent growth spurt the rate of growth is too gradual to hurt. The AAP’s own explanation is muscle tenderness from hard play — children do not feel sore while they are having fun, and the ache arrives later, when the muscles relax. The 2022 review reframes the condition as a familial primary pain disorder of early childhood, which is a different claim from a bone lengthening overnight.

Ages and how common

Onset falls between 3 and 12 years, peaking at 4 to 6 years, with a lifetime prevalence of roughly 15% across studies and about 10% of healthy children affected at any point according to the AAP. Episodes must be intermittent for at least three months to fit the definition. How long they keep coming back is covered in when do growing pains stop.

What breaks the pattern

Growing pains are a diagnosis of exclusion, which means the exclusions carry the weight. Pain in one leg only, pain still present in the morning, a swollen or warm joint, fever, a limp, or a child who cries when the leg is touched — none of those belong here, and each has its own list of causes. They are set out side by side in growing pains and joint pain.

What to do on a bad night

Gentle massage, a warm bath before bed, and a weight-appropriate dose of children’s acetaminophen or ibuprofen are what the AAP suggests, along with daily stretching of the quads, hamstrings and calves as prevention. The step-by-step version is in how to relieve growing pains.

This content is informational and does not replace medical consultation, diagnosis, or treatment. See also leg pain at night in children.

Frequently asked questions

Do growing pains happen in the arms too?

The AAP mentions aches in the legs and arms, but the legs dominate and the proposed research definition requires pain in both legs — thighs and lower legs. Arm-only pain does not fit the pattern and should be described to a pediatrician rather than assumed.

Can a toddler have growing pains?

The published definition puts onset between ages 3 and 12, with a peak at 4 to 6 years, so the low end reaches late toddlerhood. Below age 3, limb pain has no growing-pains category to fall into and is evaluated on its own.

Is my child growing faster on the nights it hurts?

No. The AAP is blunt about this: even at the peak of an adolescent growth spurt, a child's rate of growth is too gradual to be painful. The name survived; the explanation did not.

How often do episodes come?

There is no fixed frequency. The research definition asks only that the pain be intermittent for at least three months. Clusters of several nights followed by weeks of nothing are typical and do not signal that anything is getting worse.

Is a child with growing pains restless at night in other ways?

If the leg pain comes with a strong urge to move the legs, that is now an exclusion criterion, not a feature — it points toward restless legs syndrome, which is managed differently. Mention the urge specifically to your pediatrician.

Sources

  1. Growing Pains Are Normal Most Of The Time — American Academy of Pediatrics, HealthyChildren.org
  2. Leg Pain — AAP Symptom Checker, HealthyChildren.org
  3. Champion GD et al. Improved definition of growing pains: A common familial primary pain disorder of early childhood — PMC, National Library of Medicine

Written by Lucas Silva · Reviewed by Lucas Silva · Updated on August 14, 2026