Children's Headache: The Difference Between Children's and Mothers' Perceptions and Awareness

In childhood, assessing the history of headaches in children can be challenging due to their age and the reliance on parental reports, which may sometimes lead to under/over-reporting of symptoms. This study utilized the ID Migraine questionnaire to evaluate the presence of headaches in a sample of children and examined the correlation between the children's responses and those of their mothers.

A cohort of children aged 10-12 years and their mothers administered the ID Migraine questionnaire separately, which included questions about the children's headaches.

The cohort comprised 68 children (35 females and 33 males) aged 10-12 years. Within the last 3 months, 24/68 (35.3%) reported experiencing a history of headache episodes. Headache was reported by 16/35 females (45.7%) and 8/33 males (24.2%). Of the total, only 2/68 (2.95%) met two of the three criteria for potential migraine classification, 11/68 (16.1%) met at least one criterion, and 11 reported headaches but did not meet any criteria. Discrepancies between the children's and mother's responses occurred in 23/68 cases (33.8%), of which 14 (about 61%) disagreed about the occurrence of headaches in the past 3 months and 9 (about 49%) had inconsistencies in their responses to the Migraine ID items.

These results highlight the challenges of collecting headache data in children under 12 years of age. Notably, there is a discrepancy between children's and mothers' reports, with underreporting headaches reported by the other in nearly 60% of the conflicting cases. Additionally, the incidence of migraine observed in this sample was lower than what is commonly suggested in the literature.