Five Childhood Illnesses That Aren't as Scary as They Seem

Pediatric medicine is about much more than crying babies, ear infections, colds, and shots. A pediatrician's practice is filled with thousands of diagnoses. Many symptoms are obvious enough that most parents and grandparents can recognize and diagnose the ailments themselves, and doctors can treat them quickly. But some pediatric problems, such as the five listed below, are trickier: While upsetting to parents and children, doctors who recognize the symptoms know they are nothing to worry about.

1. Vaginal discharge in newborn girls

If a pediatrician forgets to warn parents to expect vaginal discharge within the first few days of their daughter's life—or if those parents forget to warn grandparents helping them care for their newborn—it can be a frightening discovery during a diaper change. This discharge can be bloody in appearance but it is actually no cause for alarm. It simply reflects the disappearance of maternal hormones from the girl's bloodstream. Pediatricians consider it normal, and it usually lasts only a few days.

2. Hand, foot, and mouth disease

Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD), which occurs mostly in the summer and early fall, has an ominous name but is usually not a serious problem for the youngsters who get it. Caused by a virus known as coxsackie, this illness will go away by itself with time. Coxsackie causes ulcers, or blisters, in the mouth as well as a characteristic rash on a child's palms and soles. The ulcers tend to appear on the tongue, throat, and gums—painfully in the way of any food or drink that passes over them. The resultant stinging can render toddlers inconsolable: They cannot eat or drink without pain, which both confuses and angers them. If their ulcers are bad enough—and if they have been sick long enough to fall behind in their liquid intake—they may become dehydrated and require medical care. Fortunately, the vast majority of children with Coxsackie recover in about 10 days. In the interim, until their mouths heal, they learn to drink by using straws, drinking only very cold liquids, or even living on popsicles until the illness runs its course.

3. Sudden inability to walk

A viral infection called benign acute myositis can cause major muscle aches and inflammation, along with a sharply decreased ability to walk, sometimes to the point of making a child's muscles refuse to bear weight at all. I once treated a toddler who awoke one morning and collapsed on the floor when she tried to get out of bed. I also took care of a boy, about age 10, who had to be carried into the office because he couldn’t walk. As scary as the infection is, though, this diagnosis is not difficult for pediatricians to make, and is easy to confirm with a quick blood test. Children just need to rest and let the virus run its course, which can take several days, and parents and grandparents need to have faith that the kids will be able to walk and run again soon.

4. Nursemaid's elbow

Almost all children with nursemaid's elbow land in the emergency room—unless they see their pediatricians first. Nursemaid's elbow typically affects toddlers and preschoolers, and can occur when children are playing and suddenly cry out and stop moving their arms, completely. What has happened is that someone has unknowingly yanked on the arm hard enough to dislocate the radial head, moving this part of the arm bone out of its elbow socket. This is a common occurrence. It can happen to children being led by the hand across the street who are yanked back to avoid a car. Swinging children by their outstretched arms can also dislocate the radial head. Fortunately, kids who come into the doctor's office with this ailment sit in such a characteristic way that the diagnosis is obvious. Reduction, or putting the radial head back into the elbow socket, is a simple procedure. X-ray confirmation that the arm is fine is usually unnecessary—asking a child to use the arm to reach for a lollipop or a sticker provides all the data one needs to see that it's recovered.

5. "Breast" development in adolescent boys

The development of breast tissue can be alarming and shameful to boys and their families if handled insensitively, but in fact it is entirely normal and occurs in up to 40 percent of all males. Called gynecomastia, this phenomenon occurs as a function of surprisingly high but entirely normal estrogen levels in some boys in the midst of puberty. Often there is so much testosterone in the boy's body that small amounts of it are converted to estrogen and therefore breast buds develop, usually under one or both nipples. Although it often lasts for two to three years, gynecomastia disappears when hormone levels normalize toward the end of puberty. The trick is to tell the boys that this is a normal phenomenon, that it will go away, and that the reason it happened in the first place is that they have so much testosterone.

This article originally appeared on Grandparents.com. © Grandparents.com LLC