The COVID-19 pandemic and associated quarantine measures highly impacted parental psychological well-being. Parents of children with chronic diseases might be specifically vulnerable as they already face multiple challenges to provide adequate care for their child. The research questions of the current study were twofold: (a) to examine whether parents of children with a chronic disease experienced more anxiety and depression compared to parents of healthy children and (b) to examine a series of risk factors for worsened well-being (i.e., depression, anxiety, and sleep problems), such as sociodemographic variables, COVID-19-specific variables (i.e., financial worries, living space, and perceived quality of health care), and parental psychological experiences (i.e., parental burn-out and less positive parenting experiences). Parents of children with a chronic disease (i.e., the clinical sample; N = 599 and 507 for Research Questions 1 and 2, respectively) and parents of healthy children (i.e., the reference sample: N = 417) filled out an online survey. Findings demonstrated that the parents in the clinical sample reported higher levels of anxiety than parents in the reference sample. Analyses within the clinical sample indicated that COVID-19-specific stressors and parental psychological experiences were associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and sleep problems. Mediation analyses furthermore indicated that the association of COVID-19-specific stressors with all outcome measures was mediated by parental burn-out. Parents of children with a chronic disease constitute a vulnerable group for worse well-being during the current pandemic. Findings suggest interventions directly targeting parental burn-out are warranted.

Early memories of pain contribute to fear and may underlie the maintenance and development of chronic pain into adulthood. Accordingly, understanding determinants that may impact children’s pain memory development is key. This study examined (a) the effect of a brief engaging pain educational video in healthy children before undergoing an experimental pain task upon children’s recalled pain intensity and pain-related fear and (b) the moderating role of parental pain- and non-pain-attending verbalizations before and after the pain task. Seventy-seven children (8–15 years old) participated in an experimental heat pain task, including actual heat pain stimuli delivered through a thermode on their forearm. Children were randomized to the experimental group (i.e., watching a pain educational video) or the control group (i.e., no video). Children’s recalled pain intensity and pain-related fear were elicited 2 weeks later. Findings showed that recalled pain intensity (but not recalled pain-related fear) of children who watched the pain educational video was significantly lower compared to the control group (p = .028). Further, parental pain-attending verbalizations before the pain task moderated the impact of the video upon children’s recalled pain intensity (p = .038). Specifically, children in the control group, but not the experimental group, whose parents used less pain-attending verbalizations recalled higher pain intensity, whereas children whose parents used more pain-attending verbalizations recalled lower pain intensity. As children’s pain memories have important implications for pain assessment, treatment, and health across the lifespan, these findings might have important implications for the prevention of development or maintenance of maladaptive pain-related outcomes.