Preventing Headaches for Children’s Health
Millions of individuals suffer from headaches, and children are no exception. Stress headaches account for 90% of pain symptoms in school-aged children. Migraine headaches, though less common, afflict 10% of adolescents. Therapists attribute children’s migraine and non-migraine headache symptoms to nerves, peer pressure, school performance, or fears. In certain situations, kids’ headaches may be treated without the use of pain medication.
How Migraines Appear in Children
Listed below are 7 alternative treatments for treating headache pain:
1) Prevention: Often, headaches are caused by a specific headache trigger, whether it be food, light, scents, weather changes or irregular sleep patterns. Identifying exactly which sensitivities are causing your child’s chronic pain is half the battle. Wine, Cheese, Perfume, and other Headache Triggers
2) Tell a story: Headache treatments which use subliminal suggestions are a popular form of alternative pain relief, albeit one which takes practice. Ask your child to imagine himself swallowing some pain medicine, and then have him tell a story about the pill’s headache-fighting powers, or its journey through the body as it combats evil headache henchmen and blasts away pain bubbles. If he prefers, he can just imagine a quiet, restful place or time.
3) Keep a headache journal: Ask your child to jot notes in a headache diary every time he feels head pain. Important details are time, day, pain level and relevant activities. Read this comprehensive list of 10 Clues your should Include in your Headache Diary Today.
4) Blow a mental balloon: Therapists often use the following method for inducing child headache sufferers in to state of relaxation and soothing headache pain. Ask the child to take deep abdominal breaths, focusing on a point a few inches below the belly button, while imagining a balloon expanding and releasing. Ask her the following three questions:
- What color is the balloon?
- What shape is it?
- How heavy is it?
Have her continue taking some more deep breaths, and then ask her the three questions again. Repeat for 5-10 minutes. What are Abdominal Migraines?
5) Talk to the pain: Ask your child to pretend to have a conversation with the “pain,” asking it why it came, what it is trying to tell her, and what prescription it can give her for relief. Then, have her follow the pain’s orders, or pretend to. She might discover that all she had to do was relax, take a nap or have a healthy snack.
6) Use color imagery: Have your child describe the pain symptoms he’s having, and try to associate relief with a color. To put out a fiery headache, quench it with jets of cool blue water. For brain freeze, imagine warm golden sunshine.
7) Imagine the pain floating away: A common meditation used for pain relief is imagining the pain as a red bubble and consciously willing it to leave. Ask him to hold his hands parallel to his head, several inches away from the source of pain. Tell him to imagine that his hands are a magnet, and that his head pain is naturally drawn away from his head and towards his hands, where they disintegrate into nothingness.
Also read:
Migraine Pain, Portrayed through Art and Poetry
Migraine Pop Quiz: How Well do you Understand your Headaches?
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