The presence of someone doing this with a child is powerful to the child. This is a great question, and one that has a many-faceted answer. All children can benefit from complementary therapies in addition to standard pain therapies. One of the biggest influences is the family and, specifically, the parent or parent figure. How the family approaches pain, pain relief and has pain beliefs has to be discovered.
Most children are very open.
The types of families who most often benefit from alternative therapies are ones who have either used them or know about them. We do a lot of teaching, however, in order to give parents and children more tools in their pain care toolbox. These are very effective and have a very important and needed place. Folks might be interested to think about complementary therapies for pain help in different developmental age groups. For the infant, parent presence, being held and cuddled, infant massage are the ones we see the obvious benefits with.