Thunder and Spiders and Monsters, Oh My!
How to Help Your Kids Overcome Their Fears
By Susan Flynn
Big, bad monsters under the bed kept 5-year-old Jack Molloy from falling asleep with regularity. Every night, his parents dutifully performed the ritual of checking and rechecking under their son’s bed for scary creatures that most certainly lurked. It’s awfully hard to fall asleep knowing that a monster plans to pounce as soon as Mom and Dad leave the room.
Then his grandfather invented a literal solution: an anti-monster potion (also known as water) in its own spray bottle. A few squirts here, there and everywhere could magically keep the bad guys at bay.
“It really worked,” says Kim Molloy, a Marshfield resident and mother of two. “I found that validating his fear made a big difference. I also think that because we didn’t say, ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ he’s now more able to come to us with his concerns.”
If only the potion could be tweaked to work on fears of spiders, toilets, thunder and lightning, bees, bathtub drains, dogs, loud noises, and the creepy flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, Jack’s grandfather might be a millionaire.
For the most part, children’s fears are a perfectly normal, healthy part of development, beginning with a baby’s stranger anxiety to a preschooler’s fear of bugs and loud noises, and continuing into teenage years, where nagging worries tend to be more about social rejection, divorce or a distraught student coming to school with a gun. With time and empathy, most children will outgrow their fears, and only in rare instances does the worry develop into a phobia that warrants professional attention.
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Top 10 Fears in the U.S.
While the exact rankings change slightly from year to year, the following is a list of the most common fears in America:
1. Snakes (51 percent)
2. Speaking in public (40 percent)
3. Heights (36 percent)
4. Being closed in a small space (34 percent)
5. Spiders and insects (27 percent)
6. Needles and getting shots (21 percent)
7. Mice (20 percent)
8. Flying on a plane (18 percent)
9. Dogs; Thunder and lightning; and Crowds (11 percent)
10. Going to the doctor (9 percent)
– Source: Gallup Poll
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Still, as any parent who has been summoned by screams in the middle of the night to dispose of a spider scaling across the ceiling can attest, sometimes kids’ fears can be a pain in the neck. Fears of thunder and lightning cut into valuable sleep time; fears of loud noises make watching Fourth of July parades or fireworks more painful than patriotic. And forget about finding any solitude at the beach if your child develops a fear of sharks or seaweed.
Sometimes, a child’s fears can even seem funny – the toddler who shrieks at the sight of the moving vacuum cleaner; the kindergartner petrified of The Grinch. But child development experts stress that parents should resist the temptation to dismiss the seemingly irrational fears of their children. What they need most is reassurance, a sympathetic ear and a jointly developed strategy for dealing with whatever it might be that frightens them.
A Sympathetic Ear
Lori Gara-Matthews, M.D., a pediatrician at Newton-Wellesley Hospital, children’s fears and the ages that they strike tend to follow a pattern. Two-year-olds develop stranger anxiety and fears of loud noises; 3- to 5-year-olds, considered the peak years for developing fears, often become afraid of animals, insects, monsters under the bed, and getting lost. Around age 9, fears tend to become more sophisticated, with children worrying about war and social rejection. Around age 12, children often fret about burglars breaking into the home.
“It’s say to safe that most children will develop a fear sometime in their lifetime. It’s very common,” says Gara-Matthews. “The absolute worst thing for a parent to do is to say something like, ‘Only babies are afraid of spiders.’ Threats or humiliation can excaerbate the fears.” Srinivasan Pillay, M.D., a Harvard Medical School psychiatry professor and author of the new book Life Unlocked: 7 Revolutionary Lessons to Overcome Fear, says parents need to help talk children through fears, providing reassurances in the simplest of terms. Ask the child: What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen? “They will see the catastrophe that the child holds in his head does not reflect the reality,” he says.
Dover mother Nancy March says her son’s fear of thunderstorms abated after they did the math and he realized that his mother had lived through at least 80 storms (two a year for 40 years) and nothing bad had ever happened to her.
Susan West, a nurse and family education specialist, has led parenting groups at Jordan Hospital in the South Shore town of Plymouth for 20 years. She’s also a mother of five, a grandmother of four, and not afraid to admit that she’s afraid of mice.
First and foremost, West tells parents, they must respect their children’s fears and make them feel safe. “We need to tell the children that it’s our job as parents to protect them and give them a way out of the situation,” she says.
For example, if a child is afraid of loud noises, but wants to see the circus, buy him ear plugs. Get a nightlight for a child afraid of the dark. Read a story about a nice spider to a child who shrieks at their sight.
West says one of her grandsons recently struggled to fall asleep after a fire drill at school. His parents listened to his worries and then took him on a tour, showing the family’s escape route and location of all fire detectors in the home. But there was still something bugging him.
He called his grandmother with a question: “If there’s a fire, do I have to take my T-ball trophy with me or do I have to play all over again and win a new one?”
West says children needs safe places to ask these sorts of questions, without worrying that anyone will laugh at them. Then, together, the grown-up and child can develop strategies for facing the fears on their terms.
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