Pain in children

Young tamariki or tamariki who are sick can't always tell us exactly what they're feeling. This can be quite upsetting for parents and whānau who may feel confused about what their child is experiencing. Parents know their child's usual reactions and behaviours but sometimes pain and fear may change these reactions.

Many things affect your child's experience of pain:

• Your child's age.
• Your child's beliefs and understanding about the cause of the pain.
• Your child's beliefs in their ability to cope.
• Your child's previous experiences with pain and how they've seen other people deal with pain.
• Your child's learned responses to pain.

Acute pain

The term 'acute pain' refers to pain that is not long-lasting. The pain may be caused by an operation, injury, illness, or medical procedure. Depending on what's caused the pain, the pain may last a few seconds (eg, a needle) through to a few weeks or months (eg, following an injury). Some pain from an operation is normal and is a part of the whole healing process. Medicines can help lessen acute pain. You can also help your child with acute pain by using methods such as relaxation and distraction techniques.

Persistent or chronic pain

Persistent or chronic pain is any pain that lasts for a longer period of time, usually longer than 3 months. This pain can be persistent (continuing) or come and go at different times. It's sometimes difficult to find a cause for persistent pain. However, there are treatments and special programmes that can help your child cope better with this type of pain. Read more about chronic pain in children.

It's not always easy to know how much pain your child is experiencing but listening to what they say and watching what they do can help give you a better idea. 

Things that can show that your child is in pain include:

• crying
• facial changes or pulling a face such as a grimace or frown
• changes in sleeping or eating patterns
• becoming quiet or withdrawn
• screaming
• refusing to move
• an overall change in their function.

Remember that changes in a child's behaviour can also happen because they're scared or frightened.

Some tamariki may tell you they're sore or hurting but may find it hard to say how much. There are some tools you can use to help with this. 

Pain scale and scoring tool

See the Faces Pain Scale(external link). This will involve asking your child to point to the face that shows how much hurt they are feeling from 'no pain' on the left through to 'very much pain' on the right. You can tell staff which number face your child has pointed to and that will help them to know how your child is feeling.

The modified FLACC scoring tool(external link) can be used to assess pain in young tamariki or those with a developmental disability. For each of the categories, select a score of 0, 1, or 2 and add them up for a score out of 10. This number will help you to explain your child's pain to staff.