When They Grow Faster Than the Game
Last month your child moved beautifully. This month they look like someone borrowed a longer pair of legs and didn't leave instructions — clumsy, a step slow, knees aching after games, the lovely touch suddenly gone. It's tempting to read it as effort, or attitude, or a slump.
Often it's none of those. It's a body growing faster than the game can keep up with.
The Essentials
Growth scrambles the basics for a while. A spurt can temporarily cost a child coordination, balance, speed and touch. The skills haven't gone; the body just changed shape underneath them.
Sore knees and heels are common in this window. During fast growth, the spots where tendons pull on growing bone can get irritated — especially with lots of running, jumping and kicking — which is the aching knee (Osgood-Schlatter) and heel (Sever's) so many young players get. It often settles with time and a sensible load, though pain that lingers deserves a proper check.
Pain is information, not weakness. A child who hurts and keeps quiet to avoid missing out is the one to watch. Teach them that flagging it is the strong move.
The keen kid is the risk. The danger is rarely the lazy child. It's the willing one who'll train through anything because they haven't learned that recovery is part of the work.
Strength work is fine done right. Age-appropriate, supervised, technique-first strength training is safe and even protective. The old fear that it stunts growth isn't supported by the evidence.
The Deep Dive
A growth spurt is a quiet disruption. When a child's limbs grow over a summer, the brain's map of where their feet and knees are is suddenly out of date — so the lovely touch that vanished is a physics problem, not a talent one. Patience does most of the work while that map redraws itself.
The aches have a real cause, and it's worth understanding. During fast growth, the spots where tendons pull on growing bone get irritated — especially with lots of running, jumping and kicking. That's the achy knee (Osgood-Schlatter) and heel (Sever's) common in active kids around a growth spurt, and both usually settle with time and a sensible load.
Which makes the keen child the one to keep an eye on. A child who loves it will play through pain they don't yet have the maturity to read — they don't know that aching is a signal, or that resting now means more football later, not less. You're the brake they haven't grown yet.
That doesn't mean wrapping them up. The fix is usually managing the load, not stopping — easing off the high-impact volume in a sore spell, not pulling them out of the game. And done properly, building strength helps rather than harms; the worry that it damages young bodies simply isn't borne out by the evidence.
“Pain is information, not weakness — and you’re allowed to be the brake a keen child hasn’t grown yet”
The line to hold: this is reassurance, not diagnosis. Most growth aches pass with a bit of patience and a lighter load — but pain that lingers, worsens, or stops them sleeping or walking properly is one for a GP or physio, not the sideline. Knowing which is which is exactly what they're there for.
The Takeaway
Mindset Shift: A growing body is not a predictable one. Clumsiness, aches and a dip in form during a spurt usually mean the body's catching up — not that effort or attitude has dropped.
This Week: Ask your child one question after the next game — "anything sore?" — and make it normal to answer honestly. If something keeps hurting week after week, book the physio rather than waiting it out.