For parents
Growing bones get hurt differently than grown ones.
Millions of American children and teenagers play organized sports, and the injuries that come with it are common enough to have their own numbers. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sports injuries such as pulled muscles and concussions send more than 2.6 million children to emergency rooms every year. A smaller, quieter category sits underneath that headline figure: the growth plate injuries that only happen to a body that's still growing.
Why this list is different
Every condition below is a growth plate problem.
That's the thread connecting all five. None of them happen to an adult body, because an adult's growth plates have already closed. They happen to a young athlete's, and they happen from repetition rather than from one dramatic fall, which is exactly why "he'll run it off" is the wrong first instinct. A pulled muscle settles down with a few days of rest. A growth plate under repeated load keeps getting loaded every time your child goes back to practice.
None of this is a substitute for a doctor's read on your child's specific injury. It's context, so you know what questions to ask and what pattern you might be looking at before you're standing on the sideline trying to decide what happens next.
Five patterns worth knowing
Where the growth plates take the most repetitive load.
Sever's disease
Calcaneal apophysitis
Children 8 to 12, boys more often than girls
The most common cause of heel pain in the growing young athlete. It comes from repetitive micro trauma to the growth plate in the heel, not from one bad step. Running and jumping sports raise the risk, and so do poor running form and calves that haven't kept up with a growth spurt.
Osgood-Schlatter disease
Patellar tendon insertion irritation
Children 9 to 14 after a rapid growth spurt, most commonly boys
Irritation of the growth plate where the patellar tendon attaches at the top of the shin. It shows up in sports built on running, cutting and jumping, as pain in front of the knee that gets worse with activity and eases with rest.
Little league shoulder
Shoulder growth plate trauma
Pitchers aged 11 to 14, also tennis players and swimmers
Chronic, repetitive micro trauma of the shoulder growth plate. Baseball pitchers are the classic case because of the sheer repetition of the throwing motion, but the same mechanism shows up in other overhead sports.
Little league elbow
Medial elbow growth plate stress
Most common in pitchers, also catchers, infielders and outfielders
Repetitive stress to the growth plate on the inside of the elbow. It's named for pitchers because throwing volume drives it fastest, but any position that throws often enough can load the same joint.
Stress fractures of the lumbar spine
Spondylolysis
Athletes whose sport repeatedly loads the spine, particularly in extension
A bone breaking down after repeated tensile or compressive stress rather than one injury. It usually shows up in the lower back, and it's more common in sports that ask the spine to extend over and over, meet after meet or practice after practice.
Why a home visit fits this age group
Seen after school, not instead of it.
Appointments run 3:00pm to 7:00pm on weekdays, which lands squarely in the window after school lets out and before dinner. A teenager dealing with heel pain or a sore knee doesn't lose a homework night or an evening with friends sitting in a waiting room, because there isn't one. Jennifer works with your child on the same stairs, the same driveway, the same living room floor they'll actually be using once treatment starts working.
No referral is required to get started either. Wisconsin allows self-referral for therapy services, so a call is enough to begin the conversation about what your child is dealing with.
Not sure which pattern fits what your child is dealing with?
That's a conversation for a call, not a page. Describe what you're seeing and Jennifer will talk through it with you. For the full range of hands-on and exercise-based treatment used across every age group, see the conditions page and therapeutic exercise.