kids can get a kind of arthritis called juvenile idiopathic arthritis or JIA (it’s also called juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, or JRA). Juvenile means young, so this means that JIA is different from the arthritis that adults get. Kids can have many different types of arthritis, but JIA is the most common.
Many problems can cause pain and swelling of the joints, so a doctor will want to know how long these problems have been going on. To be considered JIA, the joints must have swelling and pain for at least 6 weeks.