Impact of parental catastrophizing and contextual threat on parents’ emotional and behavioral responses to their child’s pain

Remembering pain after surgery

“…This is consistent with previous research showing that parent as opposed to child factors are most influential to long-term trajectories of pediatric post-surgical pain [27]. Upon observing their child in pain, parents who catastrophize tend to exhibit avoidance and distress [16; 6], engage in protective [19] and pain attending behaviors [7; 4] and show attentional biases related to their child’s pain [35]. The current findings extend this research by showing that parent catastrophizing about child pain also influences children’s and parents’ memories for pain several months following a major painful event.…”

“…Just as catastrophizing about child pain has been linked to verbal interactions shown to increase attention to pain [7; 4], parents’ and children’s memories may also reflect the verbally-based interactions that they have about pain prior to and following surgery. This may in part explain the indirect relationship between parent rumination and children’s pain memories.…”

“…Parents’ catastrophic thinking may also negatively influence the child’s pain experience which may, in turn, lead parents to develop more distressing memories about their child’s pain. Indeed, child pain is a powerful communicative signal of threat to high catastrophizing parents, influencing their attention [7], inducing self-oriented distress [16; 6], and instigating attempts to control and avoid child pain [6; 5]. Although parent and child catastrophizing have been associated with persistent post-surgical pain [29; 27; 12], this is the first longitudinal study to examine children’s and parents’ pain catastrophizing prior to major surgery and its relationship to pain memory development.…”

Parents who catastrophize about their child’s pain prioritize attempts to control pain

“…Furthermore, our findings indicated that prioritization of pain control is particularly prevalent in highly intense or chronic pain. Situations of intense or prolonged pain could enhance the threat value parents assign to the situation [6,24], thereby eliciting a heightened priority for child pain control. This prioritization of pain control in a highly threatening context may reflect an adaptive initial reaction of parents towards intense or chronic child pain.…”

Parent Pain and Catastrophizing Are Associated With Pain, Somatic Symptoms, and Pain-Related Disability Among Early Adolescents

“…Previous research has shown that parental worry and catastrophizing about children's pain is associated with higher pain complaints, pain intensity, and disability among children with chronic pain (Guite, Logan, McCue, Sherry, & Rose, 2009;Hechler et al, 2011;Lynch-Jordan, Kashikar-Zuck, Szabova, & Goldschneider, 2013). Parental catastrophizing may also increase parent attention to child pain behaviors, which may serve to inadvertently increase pain and disability (e.g., Caes, Vervoort, Trost, & Goubert, 2012).…”