Extract taken from When Harry Hit Sally: Understanding Your Child's Behaviour, by Andrea Clifford-Poston

Children live on the cusp of their imagination and are consequently very aware of the 'what ifs' of life. For this reason, childrens' fears can seem bizarre to adults

Fears in the under-fives

Even the newest of babies will let their parents know when they feel frightened or at risk. When they feel you may let go of them, drop them, or that you are handling them in an unexpectedly careless way, their arms will jerk towards yours while their legs curve up instinctively like a little monkey searching for something or someone to clasp themselves around.

This so-called 'Moro response' is likely to be even more violent if you mis-time removing the security of your hands as you lay the baby in the cot or on the changing mat before they can feel the security of the mattress beneath them. At such times, the baby will even cry out in fear.

Older babies may be frightened by ordinary, everyday objects like a vacuum cleaner, hairdryer or having their hair washed. Others will play happily in the bath but be terrified of water gurgling down the plughole as the bath is emptied.

Parents may be bewildered, even irritated, by these irrational fears, but are unlikely to expect a baby to cope with them alone. You are more likely to take them seriously and comfort and reassure your baby. So it is interesting that as babies grow up there is a real risk of adults dismissing their fears as 'silly'.

Fear as a communication

Fears are a child's way of communicating to adults that there are things in their life that feel overwhelming, inexplicable or mysterious - you may well find yourself saying, 'Welcome to the human world!' Sometimes their fears seem quite irrational, such as the two-year-old who is terrified of feathers, and it is not uncommon for small children to be afraid of characteristics and aspects of people such as beards or even spectacles.

Such fears are often a toddler's way of getting to know strange and unfamiliar things in their world. They are a kind of self-protection, so the toddler is saying to the feather, if you like, 'You show me that you're harmless and then I'll accept you - until then I'll fear you.'

These fears are very different from those based on an experience where the child has realised that life can be risky and unexpected things can happen. An eight-year-old began to scream with terror when a leaking pipe caused a small cascade of water to flood down his classroom wall. He remembered the day when he was a toddler that his mother had left the bath running while she answered the phone. The water had poured down the staircase leaving him extremely frightened.

His fear was based on reality in that he had learned there was a risk of something happening which was not only threatening but also beyond his control. What he was not taking into account was that he was now six years older and so not nearly as helpless in the face of the unexpected.

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