Wen 丨 Tuan Mom
A few days ago, Chengdu staged a cooling rehearsal. Although the temperature did not drop, the wind in the middle of the night blew earth-shatteringly, and many babies who had already slept separately from their parents were frightened into the adults' rooms.
Although the wind with its own sound effects is indeed more terrifying than thunder, many parents still can't help but "spit" their children's various strange fears. For example: afraid of stuffed toys, afraid of the sound of stir-frying, afraid of the grand soundtrack of the movie, afraid of the macaw in the cartoon...
Does your child have something particularly frightening? When children show fear, in addition to understanding and accepting their emotions and giving them hugs and comfort, what other ways can we help children cope with fear?
Children are afraid of the dark, afraid of nightmares, afraid of the monsters they imagined, afraid of shadows, afraid of the sound of firecrackers... These parents can understand, but some things are obviously not scary, why are children particularly afraid?
Rui Rui, 6 years old, has never seen a real macaw, but he has been afraid of macaws since he was 2 years old. At that time, watching a cartoon with a picture of a macaw, he was directly scared to cry. Watching all kinds of dinosaur cartoons, he is not afraid. Rui Rui's mother said that she had not understood what the macaws on TV were afraid of, until she later heard a mother in the same community say that her children were afraid of the delivery workers, and she suddenly felt that her son was not so embarrassed to be afraid of macaws.
What makes Yangyang's father most incredible is that his 10-year-old son can catch spiders with his bare hands but is very afraid of spider webs. The family often went on outings on weekends, and several times they heard his son scream suddenly, which frightened him. "Now if he sees a spider web, he will scream and quickly dodge." I was all desensitized, and the most I could do was an 'Oh' to indicate that I knew. ”
There are also some children who seem to be timid all the time, afraid of everything.
The 7-year-old boy jumps and jumps, and even in the daytime, he does not dare to go to the bathroom alone to go to the toilet. When watching a movie, if the character in the movie suddenly roars because of the plot, he can directly cry when he was a child, but now he will not cry, but his mother can obviously feel that he will suddenly become nervous and afraid.
Jumping mother was once very painful, "How can a boy be afraid of everything?" ”。 She talked to parents in many parent groups and found that whether it was boys or girls, there were still many timid children like Jump, "Maybe they are born timid!" "Jumping mom is helpless.
Whether the child is afraid of something clear and afraid, or seems to be very timid and afraid of anything, parents often first care about: Is it normal for the child to be afraid of these things?
Fear is one of the most basic primitive emotions that humans have evolved. Darwin described fear as early as his magnum opus, The Expression of Animals and Humans. And fear stays with us throughout our lives and doesn't fade away as we age.
Adults still have all kinds of things to fear, children due to immature physical and mental development, limited cognitive level, they are afraid of specific things at some stage of childhood is very normal, this is a necessary, healthy response of children to the surrounding environment. Explain that your child is beginning to understand the world and how it works, and is trying to figure out what it means to them.
As mentioned earlier, most of the fears in childhood are related to the lack of knowledge and life experience of children. But there are also some children's fears that are related to inappropriate parental methods of education. In particular, parents' excessive protection and restriction of children's behavior often leads to children's inexplicable fear of things that they are not afraid of.
For example, when children are climbing high, playing with water, and playing with dogs, if parents suddenly scare them loudly, or suddenly scream to stop them, the conditional fear caused by this behavior is combined with high, water, and dogs, and the child may form a situation of fear of heights, water, and dogs.
A child's parents, especially the elders, are too meticulous in their care and protection of their children, which can backfire. In the daily relationship with the child, the group mother suggested that it is not appropriate to pay too much attention to the child's behavior, to ensure that the child is within his own line of sight, as well as the child's safety state, to give the child a relatively free and relaxed growth space.
If we divide fear more precisely, from shallow to deep, there are four levels: uneasiness, worry, fear, and terror. In general, if the child's fear is mild, usually just uneasy, worried, afraid, parents can be relieved by listening to and accepting the child's fear, soothing the child's emotions and then alleviating.
If the fear is beyond the child's tolerance, or even seriously affects the child's normal life and even personality, it needs special attention from parents. For example, some children are afraid of the dark, afraid of nightmares, afraid that it has seriously affected his sleep, parents must pay attention. How to guide children to face fear, how to reduce the impact of fear on children, Tuan Mom sorted out some methods for everyone's reference.
01
Security is the source of all fear
When children are young, we should try to give them regular and stable care to help children establish their initial trust in the world. The sense of security that develops from this will affect the child's life.
In the process of children's growth, if the child is bullied, wronged, and treated unfairly, parents should stand up for the first time to help the child solve the problem, rather than calming things down, or even complaining about the child. If the child grows up and is still afraid of what he was afraid of when he was a child, still give him enough support and understanding, instead of laughing at his timidity.
02
Talk about fear in a childlike way
Try to talk about what your child is afraid of in a way that is easy to understand. Some children are afraid of monsters, if you tell him that "monsters have something to be afraid of, they are all fake, there are no monsters in the world", this is of no use to children, as soon as it gets dark, he is still afraid that monsters will hide under the bed.
For a while, 4-year-old Sissi was terrified of monsters. One night, he talked to his mother about monsters again. Mom asked him: Have you ever seen a monster? What does it look like? Sissi replied: I haven't seen it. But I knew it looked like a big dog, but had no ears. Mom asked again: Ah, it has no ears. Then its mother told it to eat donuts, and it couldn't hear it, so pitiful.
Then the mother and son talked for a long time about the monster without ears, hearing no children's songs, hearing the sounds of cartoons, and not hearing the good birds. After a few more conversations, in Sissi's view, the monster was not terrible, it was pitiful.
In Miyazaki's movie "Totoro," his father says to his children, "Let's laugh and see, and the terrible things will run out." "This method, you may wish to try it too."
03
Understand the situation and face up to the fear
Children are afraid of many things because of lack of cognition and lack of understanding of the object of fear. Psychologist Jones once did an experiment to eliminate fear, using adversarial conditioning to overcome children's fears.
The so-called "antagonistic conditional effect" is to help children learn that "this kind of thing is not dangerous" through "contact" and face fear. But facing fear directly does not mean directly and rudely pushing the child to the opposite side.
In the picture book "There is a Big Monster in the Corridor", the timid and fantasy little girl thinks that there is a big monster hidden in the corner of the corridor at home, and it will appear whenever it is dark. The little girl was so frightened that she went back to her room to sleep by dancing "complicated" dances, singing loudly, and running through the corridors.
Instead of taking her around the corner of the hallway to "face the fear," the little girl's father encouraged her to learn to sing and dance. Because of her fast running, the little girl also won the first place in the Games competition. When she and her father hung the medal together in the "big monster hiding place" in the corner of the corridor, she was no longer afraid.
What is your child afraid of? How do you help your child face fear? Welcome to leave a message to discuss~
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