Page 23 - Oct Nov 2017

Teaching Children to Deal with Pain
fair. The image of that ill and types and its “cures”. on an adult’s pain is the
child is out of our comfort Parents are a child’s first injured adult. We cannot

range. Our mental images teachers in life. We are feel another’s pain; we can
of children revolve around also our child’s first teach- only read his verbal and

P rosy faced, boys and girls ers about pain. nonverbal cues to under-
O with wind-blown hair, What is pain? stand the intensity he is

L playing and laughing, en- feeling. We need to keep
I joying life and sunshine. Pain is a subjective sensa- this in mind when we are
C But in reality, children do tion. What may be pain- treating our child’s injury.

E get hurt, sometimes seri- ful to one person or child Scientists and psycholo-
ously, and it may take may not be as painful to gists have studied pain for
more than a Band-Aid another. The International years. Back in the sev-
B
R to make the boo-boo go Association for the Study enteenth century the phi-
U away. When our children of Pain defines pain as losopher Rene Descartes

T take a tumble as they learn “an unpleasant sensory believed that the mind
A to walk, take a spill from and emotional experience and body were separate

L their bikes, or fall from associated with actual entities, therefore creat-
I a tree they have proudly or potential tissue dam- ing misconceptions about
T climbed, we need to know age or described in terms pain, saying that our

Y how to handle the situa- of such damage.” Pain is thoughts and feelings had
tion. Our mental attitudes, the body’s signal that it no influence on our pain.
words and physical ac- has been injured or that

tions influence the amount something is wrong. So Even in more recent years,
of pain children feel, the pain can be good, but it researchers and doctors

level of hysteria they will can also interfere with our did not believe infants
reach and their mental as- lives and our bodies’ func- and children could feel
sociations about pain and tioning. intense pain because they

life. were neurologically im-
Sometimes diagnosing a mature, and that their cries

But in order to adequately child’s pain can be diffi- and screams were caused
help our children during cult, especially in infants by fear. In the 1930s the
times of crisis and both and younger children. The prevalent mindset was that

physical and emotional only authority on a child’s if a doctor gave an infant
pain, we need to examine pain is the injured child; a sugar sucker, no anes-

what pain is, its causes just as the only authority thesia was needed during

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