Is It a Headache, or Something More?

If you’re reading this because your child just described something strange happening to their vision, or came to you clutching their stomach and their head at once, or has started avoiding the playground on bright days — take a breath. You caught it. That’s the hardest part, and you’ve already done it.

This first book in the Parenting Series is about recognition and language: what migraine can look like in kids, which is often different from how it looks in adults, and how to build a simple, shared vocabulary with your child so they can tell you what’s happening before it becomes an emergency. You are not alone in this, and you don’t have to become a medical expert overnight. You just have to become a good listener with a few of the right questions.

That’s exactly what this book is for. Migraine in children often doesn’t announce itself the way it does in adults. Kids may not say “headache” at all — they may say their tummy hurts, that they feel dizzy, that the lights are “too loud,” or simply that they want to lie down in the dark.

Younger children especially may not have the vocabulary yet to separate pain from strange from scary — it can all arrive as one undifferentiated wave of “something is wrong.” This is why migraine in kids gets missed, sometimes for years. It doesn’t look like the textbook picture.

It looks like a child who suddenly seems clumsy, cranky, pale, or withdrawn — and then, an hour or a nap later, completely fine again. Parents are often the first ones to notice the pattern, long before any doctor sees it, simply because parents are the ones present for the whole cycle. You don’t need a medical degree to notice a pattern.

You just need to be paying attention — and you already are, or you wouldn’t be reading this. Every child is different, but a few patterns show up often enough to be worth knowing. Stomach-first symptoms: abdominal pain, nausea, or vomiting with little or no head pain at all — sometimes called abdominal migraine.

Visual changes: seeing spots, zigzag lines, shimmering, or brief blurriness, which younger children may describe as “sparkles” or “the wiggly thing.” Sensitivity: sudden intolerance of light, sound, or smell that wasn’t there an hour earlier. Behavior changes: unusual irritability, clumsiness, paleness, or a sudden need to lie down and go quiet.

Short duration: childhood migraine episodes are often shorter than adult ones, sometimes resolving within an hour, especially after sleep. None of this is a diagnosis — only a doctor can give you that. But recognizing the shape of the pattern is what lets you describe it clearly when you do sit down with one, instead of a vague “something seems off sometimes.”

One of the most useful things you can give a child who experiences migraine is language — simple, concrete words for sensations that otherwise feel formless and frightening. The companion books in this series describe adults learning to greet their symptoms by name instead of panicking at them: hello, floaters; hello, snow. The same idea works beautifully for children, just built with them from scratch.

Kid-friendly questions that open the door “Does it feel like a thumping, a squeezing, or a stabbing?” “Do you see any sparkles, wiggly lines, or dark spots?” “Do the lights or sounds feel too loud right now?” “Does your tummy feel upset too, or just your head?” “On a scale of a pebble to a boulder, how big does it feel?”

Let your child help name their own experience. Some families invent a shared word for the visual symptoms — “the sparkles,” “the wobblies” — that becomes shorthand the whole household understands instantly. This isn’t cute for its own sake. A child who can say “the sparkles are back”

is a child who can ask for help three steps earlier than one who has no words for what’s happening at all. A word or phrase my child already uses to describe how they feel that I could build on… One simple question I will ask, gently, the next time something seems off…

You don’t need anything complicated — a notebook, a shared notes app, or a page in a school folder works fine. The goal is simply to notice patterns over weeks, not to interrogate your child every time something happens. What to jot down, briefly □ When did it start, and what were they doing right before?

□ What did they describe feeling? (use their own words) □ How long did it last? □ What helped? (dark room, sleep, water, quiet) □ What was happening that day — sleep, meals, screen time, stress, weather?

After a few weeks, patterns tend to surface almost on their own: always after a poor night’s sleep, always on the hottest days, always after skipping lunch. This diary becomes some of the most valuable information you can hand a pediatrician — far more useful than trying to remember details from memory in a rushed appointment. Bring your diary.

Bring your child’s own words, not just your interpretation of them. And don’t hesitate to ask directly whether what you’re describing sounds like migraine, and what the next steps might look like. Questions worth asking your doctor “Based on what we’ve noticed, could this be migraine, and if so, what type?”

“Are there specific warning signs that would mean we should seek care right away rather than wait it out?” “What’s a reasonable first step — lifestyle changes, further testing, a specialist referral?” “What early-response plan can we put in place at home and at school?”

And one firm boundary worth knowing in advance: a sudden, severe headache unlike any before, new weakness, confusion, trouble speaking, or a stiff neck with fever are reasons to seek urgent medical care, not to wait for a scheduled appointment.