Parental Overprotection Predicts the Development of Functional Somatic Symptoms in Young Adolescents

Abstract

Parental overprotection may play a role in the development of FSS in young adolescents.

Parental catastrophizing about child's pain and its relationship with activity restriction: The mediating role of parental distress

“…In particular, the more threatening parents perceived their child's experimental pain, the higher their tendency to stop their child's pain-inducing activity. As previous research suggested that parental activityrestricting behaviors are related to higher distress, somatic complaints and functional disability in children and adolescents [8,11,13,31,36,42,52,54,63,81,82], the current findings may have important clinical implications, in that they suggest that particularly high catastrophizing parents might be most likely to engage in behaviors that restrict child activity engagement. Importantly, this response may have adaptive value as it may protect the child from further harm or pain.…”

“…Fourth, mothers' responses may differ from those of fathers [30,50]. Since the majority of participating parents were mothers, the present studies did not allow investigation of mother- [17,36,42,43] and in parents with a history of chronic pain [7,61].…”

“…This may be particularly salient in the context of pediatric pain as children and adolescents are highly dependent on parental care. Moreover, accumulating evidence indicates that parental behaviors may profoundly influence their child's pain experience [3,8,11,13,22,36,52,54,63,81,82]. Because these parental reactions are not always adaptive, it is important to understand which parents engage in particular behaviors in reaction to their child in pain, why, and what the consequences might be.…”

Clinical findings, child and mother psychosocial status in functional constipation

“…The studies presented a meaningful relation between extremely protective attitude of parents and functional somatic symptoms that cannot be explained medically and that had no organic cause. Extremely protective attitude of parents both resulted in the formation of somatic symptoms and continuation of the symptoms in the long term (23). Parental attitudes regarding child rearing are associated with FC in children (24).…”

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

“…Specifically, parental responses may have adaptive as well as maladaptive influences upon their child's pain [13,16,48,63,79,80,81]. For example, in response to pain, parental "pain-attending" behaviors, such as reassuring, giving attention to child pain and limiting the child's activities, are generally related to more disability in the child [27,56,64,68].…”