Children tend to get scared easily and their fears keep changing over time. Being afraid of something is a normal reaction in children since it also teaches them to keep themselves safe. However, there is quite a difference between what a child experiences as fear and when a child has a phobia.
Here are some of the childhood fears by age that children experience.
You can help your kids overcome their fears with the following tips.
When fear gets out of hand, becomes excessive, unreasonable, and permanent, and even the slightest situation or possibility of a situation can manifest a feeling of extreme anxiety that is debilitating, this is termed as a phobia. Most of the time such fears stay for multiple months to over a year before becoming a phobia.
Many children are known to have one or the other type of a phobia. It is estimated that nearly 9-10 percent of people in the world suffer from a phobia of some sort.
Common causes of phobias in kids are:
Any events that occur in a child’s life that have a major impact on him could result in manifesting as a phobia in him. These could be as normal as the beginning of a new grade in school or shifting to a new place, or as unfortunate as a family member’s death, extreme illness or parental divorce.
In certain cases, phobia of certain aspects can be inherited from one of the parents by the kids. Even though it may not always be genetic, kids are extremely observant. On seeing any family member suffering from a phobia, they could be led to believe that they need to be afraid of it as well.
Neurotransmitters within the brain are responsible for communicating with each other, which also results in forming emotions and feelings. Two major entities here are serotonin and dopamine, which are responsible for making a human feel happy and at peace. If they go out of balance, your child can suddenly start feeling afraid of anything at all.
Here are some of the common types of phobias
In specific phobia, the child starts feeling afraid of an extremely specific entity, mostly without reason. This could be a particular place such as a closet, or a particular person such as their teacher, or a type of people like taxi drivers, and so on.
Signs And Symptoms
The child may attempt to avoid the entity of phobia or start anticipating that something bad is going to happen without reason. At times, when the object of fear is present, the actions of the child will be completely out of sync and disrupted.
In such a disorder, a particular event or object could suddenly trigger panic within the child. The cause or the trigger may not be apparent immediately, but the consequence of the panic can be seen in the child’s behaviour. This is majorly present in adolescents and young adults.
Signs And Symptoms
When in panic, the heart rate starts increasing rapidly and your child may start sweating or trembling. Breathing reduces and there might even be discomfort in the chest. In certain situations, the panic can get too strong to handle making them feel dizzy or call out saying that they are going crazy or they are going to cry. On the other spectrum, they can even freeze completely on the spot and go numb.
This is the same fear of stepping outside your comfort zone but multiplied to gargantuan proportions. The child starts feeling afraid of the outside world and unknown people completely. Any place unknown to them or any stranger can cause them to be triggered and go into a state of panic.
Signs And Symptoms
Children will refuse to leave their homes under any condition or refuse to meet or talk to any stranger or guest in the house. If forced to do so, they may panic or scream out in refusal.
Social anxiety disorder is yet another name for this and is quite rare. This is majorly termed as a fear of interacting with people in a crowd or even fear of children in certain cases.
Signs And Symptoms
Children are filled with mortal fear when it comes to introducing themselves to other people or asking questions in a classroom, going on the stage, or even peeing in a public washroom with other people present. They will also go to extreme measures to avoid being in a situation, lying or even falsely falling ill to skip a particular event or so.
Phobias are usually diagnosed by psychiatrists by undertaking a mental health evaluation of the child. Certain disorders might be apparent on the first visit, some others might take multiple visits and tests to be diagnosed.
Treatment of a phobia is highly dependent on the child’s age and the extremity of the fear. Most of the times, counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy can help them combat their phobia by themselves. In extreme cases where panic attacks get out of hand, psychiatrists may recommend some medicines that help your child calm down. Parental support is extremely necessary through this phase.
Preventing phobias is not exactly a possibility in today’s age. Steps can, however, be taken to nip the fear in its bud before it has a chance to develop into a phobia. Proper parenting plays a vital role in making this happen.
The spread and variety of fears and phobias can seem unnerving to parents. Childhood fears psychology is a developing science and understanding it can take quite some time. Staying vigilant, having open conversations with kids, and building strong bonds of trust are great ways in helping kids combat their fears.