Pain assessment in children is difficult. Pain is a subjective experience, and children may not be able to provide adequate information about their pain. Various measures are available in the literature, but uniformity has not been achieved between different scales. Moreover, age of child, sex and stage of development may alter pain experience individually and thus make measurement difficult. Children may communicate pain but may not be able to describe features like quality, intensity and frequency.

The most common pain problems seen in paediatric age group are musculoskeletal pain (arthritis, nonrheumatologic pain and fibromyalgia), headache, abdominal pain and disease (sickle cell, cystic fibrosis).

Keeping diaries affecting day to day function helps in the assessment of pain. This may also help in telling the various triggers of the pain.