It’s quite normal to be fearful of some things in life; in fact, the best way to set borders and restrictions to keep your self safe and healthy is by developing healthy fears. Being afraid is not the same as being immobilized and disabled by your fears, and oftentimes it’s during one’s childhood that the line between the two is imprecise. As humanistic therapy reports shows, children whose fears are not appropriately managed at an early stage may live a crippled life as adults. Sandtray is a dynamic type of psychotherapy that lets clients express their innermost emotions by means of metaphor and symbol.
If you notice that your child has developed some kind of fear first consider what sort of fear this is and what immediate effect this has on your child. Babies are often afraid of strangers but they do get over this fear sooner or later; children who are unable to get past this extreme fear of strangers as they grow old tend to develop social phobia which gets worse as the fear becomes increasingly out of control. Children should be able to move from one level of fear to the next; such as, a child who is afraid of monsters under the bed should be able to survive this phobia 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 behave day by day.
As children conquer their fears by stages, they begin to get the confidence to venture further out of their comfort zone. Failing to deal with these phobias suitably can cripple your child by not being able to fulfill normal daily functions because of irrational fear. It would actually even seem that more negative concerns are loaded on top of the phobia.
For children who have developed unhealthy fears, its best if you can have a therapist check if it’s real phobia, and if it is, you can then delve into different kinds of therapies like play therapy to help your child overcome it. Children will often act out their phobias when they are permitted to play; for example, if a child has a phobia of spiders, he or she will probably invent an imaginary spider while playing. This is one of the best ways to help your child confront his or her phobia because this is prepared within the child’s terms without overprotecting the alarm and reinforcing its unhealthy development.
Ignoring your child’s feelings about their phobia may be a very counterproductive thing to do because not only does it solve nothing of the initial problem, it also gives your child the message that you don’t care about what scares him or her. The activities are something that you can do with your child at home, and you can even involve other family members in order that the problem for your child’s development is shared by the whole family. On occasion it’s truly best to seek professional help when dealing with children’s phobia; therapists are trained professionals that can give you more understanding concerning what you can do to actually help your child out of the phobia.
Teach your child in a gentle but firm and consistent way how to deal with phobias instead of denying the reality or covering away from it. It may take time, but with your service and support, your child can ultimately be unconstrained of a crippling kind of unhealthy fear.