Maternal pain influences her evaluation of recurrent pain in 6- to 11-year-old healthy children

AIM: Children with recurrent pain rely on their parents to acknowledge it. We compared pain reported by healthy children and their mothers, to evaluate their agreement, and also looked at the effect of maternal health on children's pain.

METHODS: This was a cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey in Danish public schools. The participants were 131 healthy children aged 6-11 years and their mothers. The main outcome measures were the prevalence of recurrent pain reported by the mother and child, agreements between their reports and any associations between the child's pain, socio-demographic characteristics and maternal health factors.

RESULTS: Recurrent pain was reported by nearly one-third (31%) of the children and their mothers. A quarter (25%) of the mother-child pairs disagreed on the existence of pain in the child, and a third (33%) disagreed on the frequency and duration. When the data were adjusted for child characteristics and socio-demographic parameters, mothers who had chronic pain were five times more likely to report frequent pain in their children than mothers without pain. This is a new finding.

CONCLUSION: Maternal health factors may influence her evaluation of her child's pain. Family health and pain behaviour should be considered when recurrent pain is suspected in a child.