Parental Reassurance and Pediatric Procedural Pain: A Linguistic Description

Certain parental behaviors are associated with child coping and others with child distress when children undergo painful medical procedures. The finding that parental reassurance is linked with increases in child distress is perplexing and counterintuitive. The objective of the present study was to provide a detailed linguistic description of the speech functions and tones parents use when reassuring during painful medical procedures. Videotapes of 28 5-year-old children (12 boys, 16 girls) receiving immunizations who were accompanied by their parents were examined. The majority of reassuring verbalizations were statements; minor clauses (eg, “okay”) were the next most frequent type of utterance. Half of the reassuring verbalizations were spoken with a falling tone, which is indicative of speaker certainty and protectiveness. This detailed linguistic approach offers new insights into the qualities of parental reassurance during painful medical procedures. Further research is needed to elucidate the complex interactions of tone, speech function, and reassurance and their effects on child distress.PerspectiveThis article presents a detailed description of parental reassurance during pediatric immunizations. The description of the linguistic qualities of reassurance can help inform future research examining which characteristics of reassurance are associated with child distress and can help guide parental behavior during immunizations.