‘Explaining Pain Series’: Children

As mentioned in the previous blog, chronic pain can have a widespread impact on a person’s life and the lives of those around them. Many who experience chronic pain can struggle to explain their pain experience to others. This is the second blog in a series focused on helping people to better explain their pain and needs to others, by giving you things to consider when deciding to explain your pain condition. This particular blog is focused on things to consider when explaining your pain experience and needs to children, to reassure and help them better understand your experience with chronic pain.

Chronic Vs Acute Pain

To help a child understand chronic pain, it can be useful to consider explaining the difference between chronic and acute pain. Explaining that acute pain is “helpful” as it acts as an alarm that lets us know something is dangerous, so we learn not to do it again, such as touching a hot pan. It also reminds us that our body needs time to heal after an injury, where the acute pain goes away when the injury has healed.

Unlike acute pain, chronic pain lasts for over 6 months and can be explained to children as “unhelpful” pain, as it isn’t harmful or dangerous. We can think of chronic pain as like a faulty alarm that sounds all the time rather than sounding only when there is danger or an injury, which is what happens in the case of acute pain.

Chronic Pain Isn’t Dangerous or Contagious

It could be useful to give your child some reassurance and security by addressing any of their worries. This could include letting your children know that despite your chronic pain, it is not harmful, and it won’t cause anything bad to happen to you or cause you to die. It can also be useful to explain that it is very unlikely that they themselves will also get chronic pain in the future, and that your chronic pain isn’t their fault.

Activity Planning

Being in chronic pain can make it more difficult to manage certain activities that you may have done previously. It can therefore be useful to explain to your child that you still want to do these activities, but that your chronic pain makes it more difficult to move around or do things all in one go. Let them know that you need to plan and pace your activities, and that they may take longer to complete as a result. However, by taking regular breaks you are less likely to be too tired or in pain afterwards. It could be useful to consider asking your child what activities they want to do with you the most and then planning how you can best manage and pace those activities beforehand.

Final Note

Chronic pain is a difficult concept for children to grasp after a single conversation, so be patient and explain the situation as often as is needed, to ensure that they are reassured you are not in danger and so their knowledge and understanding of the situation will improve overtime.

Matt Liptrot (Assistant Psychologist – Walton Centre Pain Management Programme)