Helping Your Child Cope With Fear

Fear is a perfectly normal emotion. It can either be taken positively or negatively. A negative approach to fear would be by being scared and escaping from the problem. A positive approach however would make us confront our fear and work out a mechanism to work out a solution to the problem that is making us afraid. This is what needs to be taught to the children - to deal with their fears in a proper way.

Your child could be going through a lot of fears as a part of growing up. He could be afraid of anything - from nightmares to animals to illness to even losing the proximity to you that he enjoyed when he was younger, it could be anything.

A child's instant reaction to fear could be either ignoring it or coming to his parents for security. At this moment, how parents react or make them feel plays a very important role in their coping up with fear.

There is yet another thing to remember while dealing with a child's fear. You should not use his fear as an instrument to punish him. A lot of parents treat the police as a fearsome thing. For instance, they'll say- "If you don't stop making noise, the police will come and take you away". In this manner you're doing two way harm to the child. One, it is quite possible that he is already curious of the police and might be even scared of it as an unknown thing. You are not only re- enforcing that fear but also taking away the correct knowledge of police as a security and trustworthy thing from him

Parents should also remember to not obsessively force their own expectations on the child. Maybe you want your child to perform well in something and he might actually have a fear of it. Say, for instance swimming. By ignoring his fear and just pressurizing him to excel in it might have an absolutely contrary effect. He might start hating the sport all the more and worst still, for a lifetime. Therefore you should always try to know and understand your child's fear and not be indifferent to it.

It is extremely wrong to humiliate your child regarding his fear. There is no particular age to overcome any particular fear. It is not right to compare your child with some other kid and let him down. Rather than taking his fear as a normal thing which he can gradually overcome, he will always be ashamed of it and never be able to confront it.

The last and strict no - no is encouragement to fear by false imagination. For the purpose of mere entertainment, the family might get involved into fear provoking discussions or go for an occasional thriller or horror movie. If at the end of any such thing the kids are explained that this was purely for entertainment and has no relation to reality whatsoever, then it could be fine. However, if it is left at the child's disposal to imagine, then it will really harm his psychology badly.

Along with taking all these precautions, you as a parent can handle your child's fears by a positive approach. Giving him a sense of security through soothing words and your body language can go a long way. However, if you realize that pampering is not helping then you can be assertive with him and confront his fear along with him. He will soon learn to overpower them and his approach will become more reasonable.