I wrote earlier this morning about how as parents we can have more compassion and understanding for our young children as they start to develop and exhibit what seem like “irrational” fears. As I was writing, I couldn’t help think about how we sometimes create fears for our children or at least contribute to their fears with things that we say and do. Sometimes, the fears our children exhibit and share are really our own…
Take, for example, stranger danger and the fears we have about our children getting “taken” or “stolen” from us. Using this strong, fearful language with our children is one of the ways many parents try to get the point across that there can be unsafe people in the world. Being too heavy-handed, however, can make a child feel very fearful of even being out in public. The truth is, not every stranger is a terrible person and not every person the child doesn’t know is a bad guy. We can make our children more afraid of new experiences like going to kindergarten or a new Sunday School teacher—without really intending too. His fears are really ones that we have put upon him.
What other fears might we be passing on to our children? If we are overly afraid that she will get hurt from trying physical things, we might make her afraid to try sports, riding a bicycle, etc. Letting our child watch the evening news or see too many sensationalized stories about murders, terror, war, etc. can create a fearful child. Young children do not have the life experience or the mental development to discern what is a true fear or threat and what is not—exposing them to scary things too young (or too much) can contribute to some very real fearful experiences for the child. As parents, it is our job to help our children learn to cope with their fears and learn healthy strategies for dealing with reasonable and unreasonable fears, meanwhile taking care of our own personal fears so that they do not seep over onto our kids.
Also: How We Contribute to Our Children’s Fears