Dealing with this disorder can be challenging and create some obstacles that a parent will have to learn to work around. Another part of this that a person may not think of, is when the child gets sick, he or she have may not tell you, or react as other children since he or she does not feel pain. When Beth has a sore throat, she will start touching her neck when it gets bad and real swollen, so this will cue me that she is sick. Sadly, these children that suffer from this probably do get sicker than other children before we realize they are sick. I also had a little boy that the only way I knew he had a sore throat was after he passed it on to someone else, he did not have any different behaviors. With each child, this disorder and how he or she reacts to it will be totally different.

My doctor says that in a few cases over time a child my start to feel pain (I have not had this experience, so I cannot say much about it.) or that children will find different ways to cope with it, meaning that as a child gets older he or she would learn that they may be hurt or react when he or she gets hurt. After a couple of years with Beth living with this disorder, we started to notice that she would react to some “painful” situations but it was not a natural response. She would look to those around her before reacting, if someone showed concern or worry, then she would react in pain but if those around her just waited for her to react, she was fine and showed no pain. When she did react to pain, it was the way one of her siblings would react when they were in pain. This was a very strange thing to observe and my oldest daughter could not understand why her baby sister was hurt and doing her act of the drama queen.

My doctor did also observe Beth doing this when she was given a shot. Our doctor believes that Beth has learned how to react when she falls or gets hurt by watching her siblings and how they react to pain. There are still times that Beth will get hurt, show no reaction and state she is okay. My foster child with this disorder did not learn this behavior, maybe since he was not with us for years.

Below are the other two parts to this posting:

Foster Care: A Child That Feels No Pain

Foster Care: Problems with Not Feeling Pain