Morning,
Check out what I recently read:
… Children are frightened by clown-themed decor in hospitals, a survey suggests. How did the smiley circus entertainers become a horror staple?
Anyone who has read Stephen King’s It would probably never choose to decorate a children’s ward with clowns.
And it probably comes as no surprise to horror fans that a University of Sheffield study of 250 children for a report on hospital design suggests the children find clown motifs “frightening and unknowable”. ….
…
But he believes children’s fear may be less to do with clowns per se and more to do with being unsettled by something as unusual-seeming as a clown.
“People are typically frightened by things which are wrong in some way, wrong in a disturbingly unfamiliar way,” Prof Salkovskis says.
“It is almost certainly not a reaction to clowns, but we are sensitive to things which are extraordinary, particularly sensitive when we are young. My three-year-old was terrified by Peter Rabbit at a B&Q. Peter Rabbit is six inches high, not seven feet high.”
And obviously it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to suppose that children in hospitals, away from home, in an unfamiliar environment and worried about their health or elements of the treatment, may be more nervous than usual….MORE…
What an interesting topic. So far, the only thing my kids have show a fear of about 6 years ago was the “ghost in the blackboard”, which was utterly decimated by taking them to said blackboard in the basement and letting them scribble/feel/turn upsidedown/etc. the school item. To this day, I have no idea how such an idea was generated. Anywhos, after that hands-on experiment, all fear for that disappeared.
I’m big on facing one’s fears. Last year I proactively chose to participate in a kendo match that gave fear a new meaning to me (probably because I had never been so petrified about being hurt before). I literally forced myself to go on, and at the aftermath, realized that hey! I survived! and even if I got pummeled up, I can always recover.
I take this attitude with me to self-defense classes, karate, etc. as well; my motto is, the more I’m forced to confront my fears, the more I’m forced out of my comfort zone, the more I’m pushed to the edge….the stronger I become.
Here are some resources I’ve found for you regarding kids’ phobias:
- Anxiety, fears and phobias
- Fighting Children’s fears
- Helping Children Stare Fear in the Face
- Children’s Fears
So now…what about you? How do you deal with your children’s fears? Do you stand by them as they confront them? Or do you let them get bigger and bigger in their minds until it incapacitates them?
Well?
It’s something about which to think,
Barbara
ps – here are some ways of dealing with phobias: