Dealing with your child's fears and phobias

Managing fears and phobias

Fears and phobias are difficult to manage because they are so real to the child. They can't be dismissed by reassurance, but neither do you want to risk enlivening them by being overprotective of the child. The skill seems to be in trying to be as matter of fact as possible and also in not labelling childrens' behaviour too readily.

Babies of nine months or thereabouts may become distressed when other people approach them with their mothers. Sometimes this is referred to as 'stranger anxiety'. The assumption here is that the baby is afraid of strangers, but maybe it is not so much that they are afraid of strangers, but they prefer to be with their mother. This could seem to be a perfectly normal and natural desire for a nine-month-old baby!

Toddlers' fears are often equally normal and natural. They tend to be based on self-protection and an anxiety about strange places or people. It may not be that the toddler is afraid of the new experience or person so much as they are showing appropriate caution asking themselves is this a safe place or a nice person?

There is a real art to coping with fears in early childhood. If we take a five-year-old afraid there is a monster under the bed, how should parents handle it? You can look under the bed with the child and reassure them that there is no monster there but don't go hunting!

Sometimes the child will try and get the parents to search the room and this can only exacerbate a fear, ie, there is a monster but it is somewhere you haven't looked. It may be much better to just say firmly but kindly, 'No, there is no monster.' You can then go to acknowledge that you do understand that the child is afraid and worried about something.

Fears and anxieties in older children are often associated with anxieties about growing up and an overprotective parent creates a fearful child. A ten-year-old boy refused to go to sleepovers on the basis that he was 'frightened'.

His mother was indulgently understanding and made no attempt to encourage him to go but said, 'Well, maybe you'll be able to go to sleepovers when you're older.' As time went by, it became clear that this mother really did not want to let go of her son and that he was fast developing the idea that he had to look after her.

Older children need to know that you understand their anxiety, but they also need firm and gentle encouragement to take steps into the wider world and conquer their fears.

Extract taken from When Harry Hit Sally: Understanding Your Child's Behaviour, by Andrea Clifford-Poston, published by Simon and Schuster. It is available from 6 August 2007, for £10.99