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Managing Your Child's Chronic Pain
"Madeline is a 15-year-old girl with abdominal pain and headaches that occur most days of the week. Because of her pain, she has missed 99 days of school this year and is no longer able to play volleyball. Her parents have taken her to see a number of specialists and she has tried many different medications but she has not experienced any improvement in her pain..."
Studies suggest that as many as four out of ten children and adolescents suffer from chronic pain. The causes of chronic pain in young people vary, from illness-related causes to pain following medical procedures. In fact, in some children the cause of chronic pain is never explained.
Managing Your Child's Chronic Pain is an invaluable resource for parents who wish to learn how to help their children and families cope with persisting pain using cutting-edge, scientifically proven treatment tools and techniques. The easy-to-implement strategies in this book provide parents with practical instructions for pain management that will enable children to return to school, participate in sports and other activities, and pursue healthy and active social lives. With guidance on how to prevent relapse, maintain improvements, and prevent future problems with pain and disability, Managing Your Child's Chronic Pain will empower parents to take a hands-on approach to relieving their child's pain.
Studies suggest that as many as four out of ten children and adolescents suffer from chronic pain. The causes of chronic pain in young people vary, from illness-related causes to pain following medical procedures. In fact, in some children the cause of chronic pain is never explained.
Managing Your Child's Chronic Pain is an invaluable resource for parents who wish to learn how to help their children and families cope with persisting pain using cutting-edge, scientifically proven treatment tools and techniques. The easy-to-implement strategies in this book provide parents with practical instructions for pain management that will enable children to return to school, participate in sports and other activities, and pursue healthy and active social lives. With guidance on how to prevent relapse, maintain improvements, and prevent future problems with pain and disability, Managing Your Child's Chronic Pain will empower parents to take a hands-on approach to relieving their child's pain.
- GenresPsychology
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 2015
14 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 23, 2021
Good information in an accessable bform. While I would hope no parent ever needed this book it is one I would recommend to a parent of a child with chronic pain.
November 3, 2024
EDIT: After my daughter was diagnosed with AMPS and we struggled with techniques like those in this book for a few years, she just saw a cardiologist who gave her a soft diagnosis of POTS, or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, which in layman's terms is the heart struggling to pump blood into her head, particularly when she's vertical. POTS and some related conditions explain not just her chronic pain and fatigue but some other symptoms like extreme heat sensitivity and blurred vision (which she thought was normal so she never told us about). So she might not have AMPS at all, and POTS is especially common with teenage girls. So if your child has unexplained chronic pain, another avenue to explore beyond rheumatology is cardiac/nervous system conditions, because it could all be stemming from her heart rather than her muscles and nervous system. Check out the book
Tired Teens: Understanding and Conquering Chronic Fatigue and POTS
to explore if that describes your symptoms better than AMPS. Good luck!
...
Dealing with your own pain is one thing, but helping your child with theirs is an entirely different proposition. You're never sure exactly how they're feeling, you don't really know how to help, and you always feel inadequate and wish you could just take the pain into your own body so that your kid can get back to school and other activities. In my case as a single father, my daughter was experiencing severe anxiety a year and a half ago after her older brother moved out to go to college. When she and I both got sick with a cold, I quickly got better while she fell into a pattern of pain, fatigue, and nausea that made her essentially miss the final five months of middle school; her pediatrician diagnosed it as Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome (AMPS).
So while she missed week after week of school, I dove into this book and online articles and videos—especially at stopchildhoodpain.org, though she found these films overwhelming—to learn what she was suffering from and how to help her. The first thing this book helped me understand was how common this is—chronic pain afflicts four out of ten children(!). But it proved really valuable as it outlined individual strategies to deal with the pain. To be honest my daughter, a teenager, rebelled against any in-depth home therapy sessions that I attempted, but the book still gave me a proactive mindset and the tools, I think, to deal with her pain in a lower-key manner.
On a macro level, this book disregarded AMPS as a condition compared to other similar diagnoses (the jargon and best practices are still being worked out), but regardless of what you call it the pain is the same, so the constant theme is about helping kids work through it. As my own daughter moved into high school we were able to use techniques from this book to get her to school nearly all of the time. I worked with her on things like muscle tension and relaxation techniques, mental relaxation techniques, and especially setting manageable goals with rewards. So we're still working on it—she missed school both today and yesterday, as I write this—but she's done much better now in 9th grade (high school) than she did last year in 8th grade (middle school/junior high). I think much of this is due to the school itself; she's much more challenged academically, has created a new friend group, and has a much greater desire to be involved than before. But that falls within the strategy discussed here of giving them motivations to deal with the pain and get out the door.
And I also think that nearly a year now of my subtle efforts to implement tools, or at least the empowered mindset, from this book, has helped her arrive at this point. The book has advice for parents of different age groups, which, as a writer for children myself, I think is a wise division (a five year old's motivations are different from a fifteen year old's), and since my daughter is now well into the oldest group I've told her I won't ever force her to go to school when she's not able—I'll trust her judgment and her word—but we use these tools and vocabulary to constantly evaluate her symptoms, pain, emotions, and goals, which really helps us get her to school, or know (like I did this morning) when to back off and let her sleep. If you're looking for a magical elixir to cure your child, this book isn't it, and said elixir doesn't exist. But at the very worst this book will empower you to work with your child, understand a bit more of what they're trying to tell you, and give them the support they need to overcome their pain and keep fighting to maintain their place in the world. And that makes it worth reading, regardless of where you are. Good luck!
...
Dealing with your own pain is one thing, but helping your child with theirs is an entirely different proposition. You're never sure exactly how they're feeling, you don't really know how to help, and you always feel inadequate and wish you could just take the pain into your own body so that your kid can get back to school and other activities. In my case as a single father, my daughter was experiencing severe anxiety a year and a half ago after her older brother moved out to go to college. When she and I both got sick with a cold, I quickly got better while she fell into a pattern of pain, fatigue, and nausea that made her essentially miss the final five months of middle school; her pediatrician diagnosed it as Amplified Musculoskeletal Pain Syndrome (AMPS).
So while she missed week after week of school, I dove into this book and online articles and videos—especially at stopchildhoodpain.org, though she found these films overwhelming—to learn what she was suffering from and how to help her. The first thing this book helped me understand was how common this is—chronic pain afflicts four out of ten children(!). But it proved really valuable as it outlined individual strategies to deal with the pain. To be honest my daughter, a teenager, rebelled against any in-depth home therapy sessions that I attempted, but the book still gave me a proactive mindset and the tools, I think, to deal with her pain in a lower-key manner.
On a macro level, this book disregarded AMPS as a condition compared to other similar diagnoses (the jargon and best practices are still being worked out), but regardless of what you call it the pain is the same, so the constant theme is about helping kids work through it. As my own daughter moved into high school we were able to use techniques from this book to get her to school nearly all of the time. I worked with her on things like muscle tension and relaxation techniques, mental relaxation techniques, and especially setting manageable goals with rewards. So we're still working on it—she missed school both today and yesterday, as I write this—but she's done much better now in 9th grade (high school) than she did last year in 8th grade (middle school/junior high). I think much of this is due to the school itself; she's much more challenged academically, has created a new friend group, and has a much greater desire to be involved than before. But that falls within the strategy discussed here of giving them motivations to deal with the pain and get out the door.
And I also think that nearly a year now of my subtle efforts to implement tools, or at least the empowered mindset, from this book, has helped her arrive at this point. The book has advice for parents of different age groups, which, as a writer for children myself, I think is a wise division (a five year old's motivations are different from a fifteen year old's), and since my daughter is now well into the oldest group I've told her I won't ever force her to go to school when she's not able—I'll trust her judgment and her word—but we use these tools and vocabulary to constantly evaluate her symptoms, pain, emotions, and goals, which really helps us get her to school, or know (like I did this morning) when to back off and let her sleep. If you're looking for a magical elixir to cure your child, this book isn't it, and said elixir doesn't exist. But at the very worst this book will empower you to work with your child, understand a bit more of what they're trying to tell you, and give them the support they need to overcome their pain and keep fighting to maintain their place in the world. And that makes it worth reading, regardless of where you are. Good luck!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews