Guide
Defiant and rebellious: why your child’s «difficult phases» are so important
by Patrick Vogt
"Why am I so scared, Mummy?"
20.9.2018
Translation: machine translated
Don't you sometimes wish your children could walk through life fearlessly? Parents often find it difficult to watch their little ones being scared. But experiencing and overcoming fear is important for children and is part of their development.
It's perhaps the most important thing you need to know about children's fears: Parents can't protect children from fears - and they don't have to. Fears are important. They protect us throughout our lives from exposing ourselves to dangers without thinking. At the same time, people grow through the fears they face, and this also applies to children. It is part of their development to find their own ways of dealing with fears and overcoming them.
Dogs, lightning and dark nights
What children are typically afraid of varies depending on their age: Newborns are afraid of loud noises. Between four and six months, babies begin to smile at unfamiliar people less often than familiar ones. Many even develop a fear of strangers in the following months - they become strangers. Separation anxiety also grows during this time: children cry when their mum leaves or even just leaves the room. This anxiety usually subsides around the age of two, but sometimes increases again when they start nursery or school.
Between the ages of two and four, children start to be afraid of the dark, as psychologist Sigrun Schmidt-Traub writes in her book "Selbsthilfe bei Angst im Kindes- und Jugendalter" (Self-help for anxiety in childhood and adolescence). Fears of dogs, burglars or monsters, thunder and lightning or the next vaccination are also typical for this age. Fears of social situations are added when children start school: Children now not only worry whether they will be able to perform as required, but also whether they will make friends or be laughed at.
All these fears are normal and usually subside on their own. But of course, children can also develop a panic fear of spiders or lifts or experience panic attacks that don't go away on their own. While it makes sense to consult a specialist for such fears, parental support is sufficient for development-related fears. In her book "What's the monster doing under the bed?", psychologist Monika Specht-Tomann shows what such help can look like.
Farewells: When are you coming back, mummy?
Sooner or later, every child spends time away from their nearest and dearest. Be it the hours at nursery, kindergarten or school or staying with the neighbour because Daddy has a doctor's appointment. This is not always easy for children, depending on their age and temperament.
What helps:
- Encourage the child's independence in a familiar environment
- Support the child's curiosity
- Slowly expand the child's social environment
- Mediate that the child can also feel safe and secure with other people
- Prepare for goodbyes early on ("Three more naps, then grandad goes home again.")
- Communicate to children when the reunion is coming up ("I'll pick you up when the little hand is at three.")
- Say goodbye to the child warmly but firmly and without a guilty conscience
Sleep time: when shadows grow arms
At bedtime, minor and major dramas unfold in many families on a daily basis. Many parents are unsure what to do when children delay bedtime by asking for another glass of water and another story. Monika Specht-Tomann is convinced that you are not doing the children any favours if you get involved. It is important to consciously take time for your children and their fears before going to bed, but then withdraw just as clearly.
What helps:
- Regulated routines in the evening where the child can calm down
- Review the day together before going to bed
- Cultivate rituals: Bedtime story, singing, praying, cuddling
- Little helpers in the dark: cuddly toys, dimmed lights, familiar sounds
- Let children talk about their dreams or ask them to draw something about them. Nightmares are normal and nothing to worry about as long as they do not occur frequently and over a long period of time .
Social situations: Nobody is playing with me
It doesn't just take courage for a child to lie in bed alone at night. It's also not always easy to approach other children in the playground, pick up bread rolls from the bakery on their own or ask at school if they don't understand something. Children (and not just them) are afraid of being laughed at or not making friends.
What helps:
- Prepare children for new situations such as starting nursery or changing schools: suggest suitable picture books and role-playing games, use taster days and familiarisation periods.
- A beloved soft toy can provide comfort and security and build a bridge between the familiar place and the unfamiliar environment.
- Enable children to make new friends outside of school and cultivate friendships, for example through sports or with the neighbours'
- Involve children in solving (school) problems: "What would a wizard have to do for you to do well at school?". Children often find their own ways to overcome difficulties.
Disasters: Can there be war here too?
What happens outside in the wider world does not usually penetrate children's everyday lives. Whether shocking news affects children depends primarily on how affected their parents are. However, the age of the children and their access to the media also play a role.
What helps:
- Cultivate a conscious approach to media
- Watch difficult content together with children and offer to talk about it
- Answer questions honestly and admit your own helplessness
- Identify ways in which the child can become active and show solidarity: Light candles, pray, give away toys
Separation and divorce: It's all my fault
Children feel it when their parents no longer get along. However, they often don't dare to ask and look for explanations for the situation on their own. If the parents then separate, they come to the conclusion that they are to blame.
What helps:
- Communicate to children repeatedly and unequivocally that they are not to blame for the separation
- Explain the situation to children early on and in simple terms. In the long term, it is much worse for them to be at the mercy of their own suspicions than to hear the truth. Honesty strengthens their confidence that they can trust their feelings.
- Anger and grief need plenty of space and time. Don't expect children to see the positive side of the new situation after just a few weeks or months.
- Children should be allowed to talk about the other parent at any time and say that they miss them without getting into a conflict of loyalty.
- Cultivate shared rituals and change as little as possible in the children's everyday lives.
Illness and death: Why is grandma no longer there?
As with a separation, the same applies to an illness: children are not helped if the truth is withheld from them. On the contrary: they feel excluded and left alone with their fears. Here, too, what children imagine is often much more threatening than the reality. Children also need plenty of space for their grief.
What helps:
- Don't keep illness and death a secret from children, but involve them in conversations
- Answer questions honestly but in a child-friendly way
- Enable contact with the sick person
- Give children the feeling that they can do something for the sick person: Drawings, bouquets of flowers, send good thoughts
- Take the child's grief seriously, even when a pet dies
Parents as role models
Among all the tips, parents set an example for their children. Particularly when it comes to anxiety in social situations, children take their cue from those around them. They pick up on how they behave with other people. Children need to feel that you yourself have confidence in the world around you. Helping children to overcome their fears means, above all, giving them a sense of security and trusting them to do something. "This does not mean hiding everything that is difficult, incomprehensible and stressful from children as much as possible, keeping it away from them or sweeping it under the carpet," writes Specht-Tomann in her book. "Rather, it's about creating a place that can be a home for children and a protected environment where children's worries and fears can be expressed."
Further reading
- Monika Specht-Tomann: "What's the monster doing under the bed?"
- Sigrun Schmidt-Traub: "Self-help for anxiety in childhood and adolescence"
- "Children's fears, children's questions" (Parents' letter no. 31 from the 4th - 6th year set from Pro Juventute)
Header image: How parents deal with fears and worries rubs off on their children.
A passionate journalist and mother of two sons who moved from Zurich to Lisbon with her husband in 2014. Does her writing in cafés and appreciates that life has been treating her well in general. <br><a href="http://uemityoker.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">uemityoker.wordpress.com</a>
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