"Mum, dad, my heart is stinging"
A topic for parents with children who can already speak and express themselves well. It is not uncommon for them to come to the doctor's surgery or an emergency department with the worried sentence: "My child's heart is stinging!"
There is usually a lot of excitement - but we paediatricians can almost always quickly reassure parents and children. Because there is almost never a serious illness behind this feeling, especially not a heart condition.
So what's going on? Our brain is simply structured in such a way that when we feel pain somewhere in the chest area, from a certain age and level of understanding, we simply associate it with: "Oh God, that's my heart!" And it usually gets worse because we become worried or even panic, tense up - and it stings all the more.
But you can say that in children who are otherwise healthy, who don't have a high temperature or a cough and are otherwise fit, it's never actually the heart. The stitching comes from the muscles or the nerves - from any tension or constriction in the musculoskeletal chest, but not from the heart.
This needs to be discussed calmly with the parents and the child. And if you enquire further, you will almost always get the information that the pain tends to occur when the child is at rest, when it is lounging around or lying down. However, if the child is exerting themselves and straining their cardiovascular system, the stinging hardly ever occurs. As soon as we receive confirmation of this from the parents - and after we have listened to the child and felt its pulse to be on the safe side - we can give the all-clear.
So: If your otherwise healthy child complains of pain in the heart from time to time, especially at rest, then you can actually be sure that this is actually pain from the chest and that your child does not have a heart condition.
If you are still unsure, you can of course have your child examined, but just keep this information in mind for reassurance.
Further interesting tips
Car heat trap
In summer, you just want to go and buy an ice cream or quickly withdraw some money and the baby can wait in the car. That's one of the things you should never do! Because the car can become a life-threatening heat trap within minutes.
"Picky Eating"
Many parents are familiar with this: there's stress and arguments at the dinner table because the little one only eats the cheese or sausage - but not the bread. And definitely not cucumber - or even broccoli!!! Whatever the case may be, children can be terribly particular eaters. Under certain circumstances, this is known as "picky eating".
Nail biting
Nail biting is a nuisance - and around 10 to 15 per cent of children have this bad habit. It often causes parents stress, irritation or even concern because they ask themselves: "What's wrong with my child?" However, nail biting is not a disease in itself.