Join Line Caes discussing the One Thing she wants people challenged by pain to know about. Explore the current state of pain science research and clinical practice in this straight-to-the-point interview with Line.
About Line Caes
Dr Line Caes is passionate about furthering our understanding of the bidirectional influence between parents and children during painful experiences and how this influence changes throughout childhood. Following this passion, Line joined the University of Stirling in July 2016, attracted by strong developmental focus in Stirling and the fascinating opportunity to continue expanding her interest in early childhood pain experiences through the Division of Psychology’s Kindergarten. Here is her research profile.
Transcript
What’s the one thing you want people to challenged by pain to know about?
I would say that child pain does not only impact the child alone, but also their surroundings, or the social circle that they’re living in. And this social circle or the surroundings actually become bigger and more complex as they grow up, and the older they get. So if you work with a young person with their chronic pain or even acute pain situations, it’s really important to take account of this social circle and this complexity of the social surroundings that they’re living in. But also for a person in pain, it’s important to realise that other people around them care about them and are impacted by that pain, and that they can turn to them for support.
Yeah, that’s great. Could you talk a little bit more about the complexity of that context?
Yeah, definitely. We know that parents can become quite distressed when the child is in pain, because it’s quite hard seeing a child in pain and not entirely knowing why, potentially, or what to do exactly. And we know that this is especially the case for parents who tend to have things what we call catastrophic thoughts about their child’s pain. So in a way that means they feel helpless, they don’t really know what to do about the child’s pain, the child’s pain is also something they really think about a lot, and it’s constantly in their mind, can’t seem to just think of anything else. And for them, it feels like the worst thing possible. Like there’s nothing worse that they can imagine. So for these parents, seeing the child in pain can be quite distressing. And that distress can prevent them from taking appropriate action. So they might just be very overprotective towards the child to keeping them home from school. Be very reassuring and constantly asking, “how are you doing?”, “Are you okay”, “is fine now?”. So, and we, of course, want to protect our children as parents, but we also need to teach them to deal with pain, pain is kind of part of daily life, everyone will at some point experience pain. And so it’s important as parents that we do protect the children. And it’s fine to ask, how are you doing as it’s so painful, but kind of combining that, with what we call coping promoting responses. So kind of helping the child find ways to deal with their pain, like taking a deep breath, or thinking about something else, distracting them by reading a book, or watching a movie, and try to relax themselves.
I find the most complex situation adolescents actually, so the kind of transitioning from a child to young adult to adult life, because then you’ve got the whole school situation, you’ve got the peers and the friends. And if the thinking of, for example, an adolescent with chronic pain, then you’ve got all of that working with you as well. So the adolescent typically doesn’t want to feel different from their peers, typically doesn’t want to be different. So they’re doing their best to keep up appearances, if they, for example, have chronic pain. But that can backfire. Because they often can’t keep up with the peers, they can’t do all the things that their peers are doing, but they want to keep that face. So it’s quite important that we understand that and it’s quite hard, they are different. And it’s kind of helping them understand that they are different. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have friends and they can’t go to school and they can’t join in and be inclusive and be part of that whole kind of adolescent life or teenage life. So you have to kind of work hard with a school because often the teachers we’ve done some research that teachers who say “we would love to support them, but we didn’t get the training, I have absolutely no idea other than to give them a paracetamol, some medicine and send them home, if they have a pain episode, I would love to keep them in school and support them in ways of for example, relaxation, or have a quiet corner or go for a walk and come back whatever works for the child if they have a pain episode at a school”. But often the teachers feel helpless in the sense that they never got the training for that. So there I think again, it’s quite important the communication between the school, the parents, the child, potentially the health care professional, to make sure that the teachers can actually support them. And I think that as a first step, in a way for the adolescent to feel inclusive as well. And to feel less different towards their peers and their friends and a I find that if we could include kind of pain education in a way within the school. That would be quite supportive. If it’s something that’s part of education, it is hopefully something that we can teach children from young onwards in schools, and throughout the school curriculum of pain management as a part of life. And everyone will experience pain at some point in their life and teach them techniques as we teach them maths and reading. That I think, yeah, we set them up for also an adulthood if they experience a pain episode to potentially know, “oh in school, they taught me about distraction and relaxation, maybe I should try that”. Rather than feeling, “oh, it’s got a migraine, and I have no idea what to do with it”. So I do think it’s helping us to like, grow up and be an adult that knows how to deal with pain and potentially become a parent and know how to teach our children become older, stay relaxed, and don’t become too distressed.
Yeah, that’s cool. That’s such a good message, like, you know, starts as a kid, and this is pain management for life. Really, thank you for your time. I really appreciate you sharing your one thing with us
Thanks. Yeah, thank you for inviting me.