TV more effective for child pain
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-08-18 08:47 NEW YORK - Television can act like a painkiller
when it comes to children and is more effective than a mother's comforting,
according to a small Italian study.
The University of Siena study, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood,
was based on 69 children aged seven to 12 who were divided into three groups to
have blood taken.
One group was given no distraction while the blood was being taken while
mothers of children in the second group attempted to distract the youngsters by
talking to them, soothing, and/or caressing them.
In the third group, the children were allowed to watch television cartoons
while the procedure was being carried out.
After the samples were taken, the children and their mothers rated their pain
scores.
The children recording the highest pain scores were in the group getting no
distraction. These scores were about three times as high as those recorded by
children allowed to watch the cartoons.
Children comforted by their mothers recorded middling scores.
On average, the mothers rated pain scores higher than the children but they
also recorded the lowest pain scores for children who had been allowed to watch
television.
"The higher pain level reported by children during mothers' efforts at
distraction shows the difficulty mothers have in interacting positively at a
difficult moment in their children's life," the researchers said in their
report.
They added that watching television also seemed to increase children's pain
tolerance.
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