2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
In any family, there comes a time when a child begins to experience any fears. Children are afraid of the dark, monsters under the bed, loud sounds, water. Parents may not always understand what a child is afraid of; often, an adult's fears of childhood seem to be nonsense. But for a child, all his fears are very real, they really exist, and cause a lot of negative emotions. We will try to figure out what children's fears are, and what a parent can do to help a child cope, as well as what should not be done
Some fears are in fact an age norm, therefore, let us consider in more detail their features and the age of their occurrence.
For example, variants of fears typical of children under 5 years of age: fear of getting hurt, fear of unfamiliar places and strangers, fear of the dark, water, loud sounds, fear of animals
Children a little older begin to fear death, ghosts, monsters and darkness, nightmares may appear
Schoolchildren develop their own specific fears, for example, fear of being ridiculed, unsuccessful, fear of not finding friends, of being rejected
To help your child cope with fears, parents should:
- Recognize the reality of fear, accept the child's feelings, say: “Yes, I see that you are scared”, “Yes, you are scared, you are scared …”;
- Hug the child, tell him: "I am with you", "I am here, I will not go anywhere";
- For children from the age of two, a simple explanation of one or another phenomenon that frightened them is enough;
- Encourage the child to talk about his fears, discuss ways to overcome them;
- In a playful way, you can get to know his fears better. If the child is afraid of the dark, then you can start by setting up a tent in the room during the day and playing with the child, turning on and off the flashlight. Later, you can play together with a child with a flashlight, when it was already dark;
- Try to remove from the child's life things that can increase fears (for example, watching TV: news, cartoons that are not age appropriate);
- For children, predictability in their lives is important: and these are, first of all, simple and followed family rules and daily routine;
- Praise any, even the smallest, child's progress in overcoming fear. Talk to your child about your love for him, show that your feelings do not change, regardless of whether he is afraid of something or not.
What not to do:
- Do not shame your child (you are already big, this cannot be scary);
- Do not laugh at the baby's fears (it is funny or silly to be afraid of this);
- You should not force the child to face his fear (stay in a dark room and you will see that there is no one there; pet the dog, she will not bite);
- Do not criticize your child for failing to overcome fear;
- Pay attention to those warnings or threats with which you turn to the child: “if you don’t obey, then the uncle policeman will take you away”, “if you behave like this, we will leave you here, we will go home ourselves”, “if you touch the sockets, you will die. " Such phrases can become a source of fears for a child.
So, we see that the appearance of fears in children is normal and natural. With the right approach, in most cases, children and parents can cope with this problem together. But it so happens that the child's fears do not go away and this affects the life of the whole family: the child does not sleep in his bed, is afraid of doctors or nurses and does not let them near him, etc. And it is possible that some undesirable behavior of the child (for example, the fear of sleeping alone) begins to perform an important function in the life of the family. In this case, it is worth contacting a family therapist or child psychologist for advice.
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