Abstract
Background
Parental responses to children’s pain shape how children interpret and cope with pain symptoms through parental modeling and operant conditioning. Evidence suggests that parental distraction is effective in reducing children’s acute pain responses, but findings are inconsistent across pain tolerance, intensity, and unpleasantness, and are limited to samples of primarily middle and upper‐middle class families. Although socioeconomically disadvantaged families may have fewer psychological resources to cope with pain, no studies have examined whether the utility of parent distraction varies by family socioeconomic status (SES). The current study tested the hypothesis that relations between parental distraction and acute pain responses in children vary by family SES, with children from higher versus lower SES families experiencing more substantial benefits.
Methods
Children’s pain symptoms and parents’ use of verbal distraction during a cold pressor task were examined in a community sample of 530 twin children aged 7‐12 years old and their primary caregivers.
Results
Parental distraction was positively associated with children‘s pain tolerance and unrelated to intensity and unpleasantness, but these associations are qualified by significant moderation. In families with higher SES, parental distraction was an effective technique in children’s pain management, associated with more pain tolerance, and less pain intensity and unpleasantness. However, for families with lower SES, these same benefits were not present.
Conclusions
Findings suggest that the effectiveness of parental distraction for children’s acute pain may depend on family SES.
from Wiley: European Journal of Pain: Table of Contents https://ift.tt/2EV2UUK
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