The Best Way to Talk to a Child in Pain

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What we experience as children has a profound impact on both our physical and mental health as adults. Reports often focus on the harmful effects of adverse childhood experiences, which increase a person’s risk of developing depression and anxiety, sleep disorders, heart disease, and even chronic pain.

Research is showing, though, that positive experiences in childhood can have equally long-term benefits. A new study published in the journal Pain suggests that how you react when a child comes to you in pain could shape how they respond to that sensation later in life. Validating the child’s feelings in that moment might even help prevent them from developing chronic pain down the road.

What Does Validation Look Like?

Validation means communicating to someone through your words and actions that their point of view is important, reasonable, and legitimate.

For a child in pain (or a child who's afraid they're about to be in pain), validation can look like:

• Active listening, which builds a child’s trust in you (e.g. “I hear you saying you felt nervous coming to the clinic today”)
• Naming their emotions, which can help the child identify what they’re feeling (e.g. “It sounds like you’re frightened”)
• Legitimizing their experience, which develops a child’s self-confidence (e.g. “It makes sense that you’re frightened—needles can be scary”)
• Praising adaptive behaviors, which reinforces the child’s ability to regulate their emotions (e.g. “I’m impressed with your bravery in coming to the clinic today even though you were frightened”)
• Engaging the child in a healthy coping strategy, which teaches them they’re capable of taking positive steps for their health, even when that’s challenging (e.g. “Why don’t we play a game together as a distraction?”)

Validation isn’t the same as reassurance, which has been shown to increase children’s pain and distress even when it sounds positive (e.g. “you can get through this” or “I’ll hold your hand”). This may be because reassuring statements give a child the impression the adult is worried, too.

How Validation Could Prevent Future Pain

It can be tempting to dismiss a child’s complaints about small injuries like scrapes, bruises, or injections. As we age and experience higher levels of pain, most of us come to ignore what strikes us as minor aches and pangs, and it can seem sensible to try to teach a child to do the same. But while they’re still learning about pain, consistent validation builds a child’s confidence in their internal experiences and allows them to try out healthy coping strategies.

“When a parent or doctor validates a child’s experiences in a way that matches their expressed vulnerability, it helps the child to feel accepted, builds connection and trust, and may help the child to develop critical skills in regulating their emotions,” explains lead study author Dr. Sarah B. Wallwork, a researcher at the University of South Australia.

Since how intensely we feel pain is influenced in part by our past experiences, positive childhood memories of pain management could reduce how much pain a person actually feels in adult life.

The study’s authors also point out, “Validation promotes confidence that their future pain experiences will be believed and trusted and that they can disclose their pain experiences to others and expect to be believed and supported.”

As a result, children who have their pain validated by the adults in their lives may be more likely to seek healthcare when they need it, which could prevent chronic conditions from developing.

“By validating children’s experiences of pain,” argues Dr. Wallwork, “they are likely to hold fewer negatively biased memories of pain and be in a better position to seek help in the future.”