Settling Children’s Nighttime Fears When my first
child came along and I didn’t know any better, I made the fatal “dad mistake”
when it came to helping her battle the monsters in her bedroom. Unwittingly, I
would frequently grab a baseball bat and head into her room in hopes of
quelling her cries for help by standing ready to battle the imaginary monsters.
As I lay on the floor swinging at those nonexistent creatures, I remember
shouting out in a Ray Romano like voice from the television show Everyone Loves
Raymond “there, I got all those mean monsters and now they are all gone.” But
when I got up off the floor and attempted to kiss her goodnight so I could
leave, she would announce that the monsters had escaped my attack and were now
hiding somewhere else in the room. Each of
my next attacks only led to the monsters mysteriously moving to yet another
location when finally, my patience would be tried and I would usually end up
snapping at her that the monsters were gone and ordering her to “go to sleep.” She would end up crying and I would end up
feeling like badly. I would then try to console her and eventually give in to
her pleads of something silly like leaving her light on or letting her stay up
later as means to helping both of us feel better.
Based on my
conversations with many parents, the scene I described above may be going on in
many homes in the evening hours; loving parents trying to solve their
children’s problems with being frightened at bedtime. Well known pediatrician
and expert in child development, T. Berry Brazelton, tells us in his book
Touchpoints (Perseus Books, 1992) that fear comes in various forms at different
stage levels of the child’s development.
He points out that the occurrence of this fear must happen in order for
the child to develop a sense of self-control over the feelings of fear. The
onset of fear activates a sudden surge of adrenalin that serves to teach a
child how to handle this physiological reaction and to learn to sooth him or
herself in that moment. Throughout the various development stages, a child has
a number of life experiences that, without warning, throws him or her off
balance. These occurrences provide learning opportunities for the child to
adjust and adapt to the surrounding world.
Parents
unknowingly play a key role in their child’s fearful experiences by helping
them through it, not making a bigger issue of it than it should be. Without
this awareness however, many adults inappropriately set out to eliminate the
fear from their child’s experience as I had done, and rob the child of the
ability to adapt and self-manage their emotions. It is an uncomfortable
situation to see your child hurting emotionally and it becomes an automatic
reaction of loving and uninformed parents to want to “make it all better” for
their child, rather than allowing them to have the full experience. Caregivers
also get in the way of their child’s normal emotional development by attaching
themselves to an experience their child has that simulates one they themselves
have had at a younger age. The child suddenly becomes frightened of dogs.
Seeing this reaction in their child, it instantly reignites the unresolved fear
of dogs the adult had as a child. The adult then relives this childhood fear,
adding their own anxiety to that of the child, inappropriately intensifying the
fear for the child.
Giving in to
the child and focusing on the monsters is not the answer. I suggest to parents
that they help their child focus on what to do about the feeling and not on the
monster. I encourage adult caregivers I’m working with to help the child focus
on what he or she can do to affect his environment that might be causing the
fear. By the time my other two children came along, I had learned not to
focus on the monster and instead, helped to coach each of them to determine
what they could do that would make their room less scary. In other words,
acknowledge the feeling of the fear, but then transfer all of the rest of my
energy (and theirs) to helping determine what they could do about it.
When my child would say, "there is a monster in my closet (or under the
bed)," I would immediately say "It looks like you’re feeling
scared... what do you think you could do to make your room less
scary?" Sometimes my child would respond with "I don't
know." I would then immediately say "Make believe you
know." This seemed to give them permission to be creative.
They would then come up with some possible solutions. One time, the
solution my young daughter came up with was "I know, I can sleep with
you!" I then said "That's a good idea, but Daddy is not willing
to have anyone else sleep with him... what else can you come up
with?" This exercise encouraged her to continue to generate ideas
until she thought of one that I was OK with. Society puts
so much emphasis on each of us working so hard to acquire our academic
education, but rarely are we taught about the importance of increasing our
emotional intelligence. Strangely enough, our prisons are filled with those who
can read, write, and add, but it was most likely their inability to manage
their emotions that got them there to begin with. The next time your children
become fearful about a monster in their closet, simply acknowledge their
feelings and then coach them into developing a constructive solution of making
their room less scary. The result for them will be feeling like they can adapt,
manage their feelings, and realize the power to manipulate their own
surroundings to diminish those uncomfortable feelings. It may also lead to you
healing unresolved feelings of your own. |
 |
||||||||||||||||
 
Categories7 Habits of Highly Effective PeopleAttention Creativity Discipline LIstening Parent Education Parenting Positive Parenting Present awareness Project School school age Spanking Teens Toddlers and Preschoolers
|
|
 |
||||||||||||||
    |
||||||||||||||||
