Manhattan
Follow us!


When Kids Expect Something to Hurt, They Feel More Pain

When Kids Expect Something to Hurt, They Feel More Pain

A new study suggests medical procedures, like shots, may be more painful when kids expect a high level of pain.


You know the feeling all too well: You’re at the doctor’s office for your annual flu shot, and as the needle comes closer, you visibly recoil and even wince a little bit. It’s called pain expectation, and a new study says this phenomenon is especially real for children.

The study, conducted byUC Riverside psychologist Kalina Michalska, suggests kids feel more pain when they anticipate pain.

For the study, which included 21 healthy children, 27 children with an anxiety disorder, and 25 adults, researchers applied thermal heat and asked the subjects to rate levels of pain: low, medium, high. The high heat was only as warm as very warm tap water, but during the experiment, only one temperature—the one each subject rated medium—was used. The difference was actually in the tone subjects heard before the heat was applied. One tone meant low heat, the other meant high.

Even when a subject heard a cue indicating high pain, the pain was only rated as medium.



Although researchers expected the strongest expectation-experience correlation among anxious children, all three groups reacted the same way.

“What we learn is that both healthy and anxious children's experience of pain is influenced by what they are told about it. If we tell them they will experience a lot of pain—or they tell themselves this—they will actually experience more pain and greater negative emotions as a consequence," says Michalska.

So what can parents do? Michalska says the study reinforces the necessity of not "hyping up" painful experiences. Instead, parents should distract children and discourage them from overthinking the experience.


More Health Articles:

Read Big Apple Parent’s Back-to-School Magazine Today!

The back-to-school issue of Big Apple Parent features advice to help your kids be successful with remote learning, fall family activity ideas, and mor...


Latest News:

8 Family Health and Fitness Tips for 2023

Check out these expert family health and fitness tips from Mike Silverman, director of sports at City Parks Foundation in NYC.


Family Activities:



Have a Laugh:

Best Memes of the Week for Parents

Here are the funniest parenting memes from Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit this week.
Brigitt Earley

Author: Brigitt Earley is a freelance writer and editor based in NJ. She’s a new mom to a baby boy, runs an Instagram account full of the most delicious food she can find (@literallyallthefood), and loves to hate a good barre class. See More

Featured Listings:

The École

The École

Flatiron, Manhattan, NY The École, formerly École Internationale de New York, is an intimate and independent French-American N-8 school located in New York’s vibrant Flatiron...

Bloomingdale School of Music

Bloomingdale School of Music

Upper West Side , Bloomingdale School of Music is dedicated to the belief that music changes lives. Everyone should have access to high-quality music education.

Mommybites Nanny Boards

Mommybites Nanny Boards

New York, NY The Mommybites FREE nanny board is the ‘go to’ place for finding high quality nannies since 2006.

ThoughtGallery.org

ThoughtGallery.org

New York, NY ThoughtGallery.org has been created for intellectually curious people who want a single resource to discover activities that pique their interests.