Caring for your child who has headaches
Home treatment can help relieve your child's headaches. It also can help reduce how often the headaches occur.
Follow these steps for treating your child's migraines or tension headaches at home.
- Give your child comfort and support.
Headaches can be painful and upsetting. Easing stress or anxiety about the headaches is important for helping your child feel better.
- Give medicines exactly as your child's doctor says.
If your child's doctor has not prescribed any medicines for headaches, give your child a pain reliever, such as children's acetaminophen or ibuprofen.
- Don't let your child take medicine for headache pain too often.
Talk to the doctor if your child is taking medicine more than 2 days a week to stop a headache. Taking too much pain medicine can lead to more headaches. These are called medicine-overuse headaches.
- Have your child go to a quiet, dark room to rest.
Most headaches will go away with rest or sleep. Watching TV, using the computer, talking on the phone, sending text messages, and reading can often make the headache worse.
- Put a cold, moist cloth or ice pack on the part of the head that hurts.
If you use ice, put a thin cloth between the ice and your child's skin.
- Heat can help relax your child's muscles.
Try a warm bath or shower. Or use a warm, moist towel or heating pad set on low to relax tight muscles in your child's shoulders and neck.
- Gently massage your child's neck and shoulders.
- Give your child fluids.
You can give your child water. Don't give your child drinks that contain caffeine. Fluids may help the headache go away faster.
Headache in children: When to call
Call 911 anytime you think your child may need emergency care. For example, call if:
- Your child has a very painful, sudden headache that's different from any they have had before.
- Your child has a headache with sudden weakness, numbness, trouble moving parts of the body, vision problems, slurred speech, confusion, or behavior changes.
Call your doctor now or seek immediate medical care if:
- Your child has headaches after a recent fall or blow to the head.
- Your child has a fever and a stiff neck.
- Your child has new nausea and vomiting, or they cannot keep down food or fluids.
Watch closely for changes in your child's health, and be sure to contact your doctor if:
- Your child wakes up in the morning with a headache and vomiting, and this happens more than a few times.
- Light hurts your child's eyes.
- Your child has a headache that does not get better within 1 or 2 days.
- Your child's headaches get worse or happen more often.
- Your child is often missing school, sports, or other activities because of their headaches.
©2011-2025 Healthwise, Incorporated