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How Can Parents Help Children Identify and Overcome Irrational Fears

Dwelling in fear is very different from just having a healthy kind of fear about something; living in fear disables you and severely decreases your quality of life while having a healthy fear doesn’t. Fear is a crucial part of life because it teaches you self-preservation. Some research on humanistic therapy even states that a little fear and anxiety can be helpful for children in their emotional development. Sandtray Therapy is a dynamic type of psychotherapy that lets clients express their innermost emotions by means of metaphor and symbol.

Parents are often concerned that their children develop fears that are not healthful and directly bring their children to therapy to get help. This age-appropriate fear isn’t something that should alarm parents, but it’s something that they should recognize how to deal with to prevent these fears from becoming total, actual phobias. Children should be able to move from one level of fear to the next; for instance, a child who is afraid of monsters under the bed should be able to outgrow this fear by the time he or she becomes a teenager; being unable to get over a fear can be unhealthy and may eventually affect the way that your child functions every day.

Some parents who feel that their child’s phobias are unreasonable (because they are) may often feel irritated to have to handle them and often make the mistake of pushing their child to face their phobias. Failing to deal with these phobias suitably can cripple your child by not being able to fulfill normal daily functions because of irrational fear. The fear of strangers, for instance, is normal among very young children, but when the child moves past that age group and approaches puberty while still struggling with that phobia, it can wholly slow down his or her social and emotional development.

There are many kinds of therapies that are fitting for kids, such as art or play therapy. Children will often act out their phobias when they are allowed to play; for example, if a child has a phobia of spiders, he or she will probably invent an imaginary spider while playing. It’s also vital to take in that parents can learn a lot through their children’s play therapy sessions because therapists usually encourage parent partaking.

Some parents, especially those who have never had to deal with phobia of any sort, tend to become very harsh and judgmental of their children, thinking that having irrational fear is silly and immature. It’s equally counterproductive to always keep all of the lights turned on for your child because this will only affirm and encourage your child to develop the apprehension in preference to facing it and dealing with it. Parents would necessitate to be well-informed about how the dynamics of phobias work so that they don’t do anything to make it shoddier; extremes such as ignoring the fear and building your family routine around the fear certainly doesn’t help your child.

You can anticipate that some phobias are harder to cure and may take years before your child can fully recover from it, especially if the phobia is associated to a traumatic event that happened in his or her life before. It may take time, but with your service and support, your child can ultimately be unconstrained of a crippling kind of unhealthy fear.

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