Today a situation happened that really made me think on the concept of fear. My older son is going through a phase right now where everything is scary. He's got a lot of reasons for it. I'm not saying that the whole world should walk on egg shells around him because he's so afraid, but it means he's got a lot to conquer in his little life.
What got me thinking on this whole thing was my room mate's mom telling me, "Don't say 'scared'. Don't use the 'a' word either." It took me about an hour to finally figure out what this mysterious "a" word was. I think she said something about the situation being "disconcerting". While I do find that to be a valuable word and teaching a small child to use it properly isn't necessarily a bad thing, I don't really think it mattered. My son was feeling an emotion and reacted to it, no matter what name we may have used to label it.
With small children, emotions are a large part of how they interact with their world. In learning to express themselves, one of the most challenging things to learn is expressing their emotions. It's hard for a little kid to tell you that something is frustrating them when they just don't have a word for it. Instead they just react, throw a tantrum, or whatever the case may be. Anger tends to be reacted with the same way. Sadness can lead to tears streaking down the face while clinging desperately to Mommy's leg and refusing to let go. There's all sorts of ways these emotions manifest when a child can't communicate them. You've really got to learn their signs and cues so you know how to handle them.
When a child has words to put on these emotions, whatever those words are, they can more easily explain the situation and deal with the emotions. When my daughter comes up to me screaming, "I'm so angry because my brother won't let me play the way I want to play!" I have a pretty good handle on the situation. She's angry. She's got a problem. She wants it solved. When my son comes screaming down the stairs crying, "Mommy! I'm scared of the monster!" I may not know what he means by a monster, but I can definitely understand that he's scared. We can then take actions to conquer that fear. Knowing what emotions my children are dealing with really helps me find a way to solve the problem. It doesn't even matter what the label is at that point, as long as I know what the problem is and how the child feels so I can get to the root of the problem. In the cases I've already mentioned, the emotion is pretty obvious over the words that are being said. However, there's been cases with my son where I don't know if he's hurt, if he's sick, what's going on until he tells me.
Does the word used to describe the emotion really change anything? I don't think so. After all, I can say that I'm frustrated or aggravated. If I'm using them for the same purpose, then it might as well be the same word. I can say I'm angry, livid, or irate. All of those words convey the same idea, that I'm really ticked off, and depending on the way I say it, you can figure whether I'm just highly agitated by the whole thing, or if I'm ready to blow my stack. If that's the case, then why does saying "disconcerted", "nervous", or "wary" have any different weight than "scared"? If my son is really scared, then won't that feeling he has just be associated with a new word? It doesn't make him any less afraid, and it definitely doesn't change the fact that we have a fear to confront. The emotion is still the same emotion. The reaction is still the same reaction. The result is still the same result, and the solution is still going to be the same solution.
I think with words, a lot of that is really for the parents. After all, no matter what the word, the emotion and reaction to it is still the same. Is my daughter going to change her tune when she and her brother are fighting again just because I get her to use the word irate? Certainly not! She's just going to be using a loftier word to throw over her same, furious attitude. In some cases, it may just allow her to express more depth to the situation, but it doesn't change the emotion. However, the parents will react differently if their child tells them they are furious than if they just use the basic word of angry.
I guess the same goes for fear, really. For most parents, if their son were to say he was nervous about the monster in his closet, that seems like a much easier thing to tackle than a fear. The parent can have a much easier time discerning the level of fear, from simply cautious to all out dread. However, no matter what word you use, the fear still needs to be dealt with and conquered. As I said, the description may be different, but the end result is still the same.
The truth of the matter is we adults can't help how kids feel, only what we do about it. For example, the little baby taking it's first wobbly steps falls down and starts wailing when every adult in the room jumps up to see if he's okay. In many cases, that same baby would just pick himself up and try again, or move on to something else if everyone just reacted like it was a normal, every day event. In the first case, the baby received the clue that something was wrong, and was quite possibly startled by all the adults jumping everywhere. It escalated the situation. In the second case, the baby was allowed to assess the situation himself, and realizing he didn't get hurt and nothing caused a fear reaction, he had no reason to cry and went about his business.
In the case of difficult emotions, like fear, a parent needs to model and teach a child to handle those emotions. Fear is especially difficult because, to that child, whatever they think is a threat or a danger is very real. While we might find the idea of monsters in the closet to be silly or even dumb, to a child with an active imagination, those monsters will get him if someone doesn't do something about it! Learning to deal with these emotions are essential life tools.
Again, looking at that whole subject of fear, I feel that fear should be validated, contrary to a lot of parents I know. My son was afraid of the monster in his window for a long time. Isn't that a great time for a lesson in bravery and courage? After all, bravery and courage aren't anything without fear. I mean, anyone can do something when they're not afraid of it, but it's a true victory when you've got a fear to face. What about the fear of the dark? I know my son's afraid of the dark, and my daughter used to be too. I don't know if it's going to work with my son, but for my daughter, she had to learn to put her mind at rest and stop thinking so much. We thought up a good strategy for making her feel safe and protected. She would talk to her great-great-grandmother who had recently died at the time. All she needed to do was call "Great-great-grandma Ghost!" and there she would be to protect her. She particularly liked that one because she'd overheard me talking about my great-grandmother dying and talking about some of what I remembered of her with a friend. Whatever works, right? It got her mind to settle so she'd stop imagining such wild things and actually get to sleep when it was dark. This isn't just about teaching my kids not to be afraid, but teaching my kids ways to conquer their fears and show how brave they really are.
Fears can also be subjects of science and learning. When my son was afraid of the moon because of something about aliens, it would have been a great time for a lesson on what the moon is really about! I wish I'd thought about it at the time! When my daughter was afraid of thunder storms and tornadoes, her aunt was kind enough to send all kinds of books on storms! While the loud noises did sometimes scare her when she woke up in the middle of the night, she was usually even more calm in a storm than most adults! I'm sure that would be a wonderfully useful tool for kids who are afraid of bugs, snakes, and other critters of the wild too!
Then there's fears that really are kind of rational. In the case of my son, he was set down on the edge of the sink. He's got a huge fear of water right now, so I think that's where it all stemmed from, though I wasn't really given much of a chance to explain that. His fear of water is kind of rational. A little over two years ago we had a problem with lice that plagued us forever. We'd get rid of it just to get it back from one of our neighbors. We'd get rid of it again, and next thing I know, our kids had once again been exposed by someone else. The whole neighborhood seemed to be passing it around again and again. It's one of those situations where everyone treating at the exact same time might have done some good, but I wasn't going to keep my kids in quarantine from the neighborhood kids when they wanted to go out and play, and didn't exactly understand. We found out somewhere in the midst of passing it around and getting it back that the chemicals just stopped working, but by then my older son was already sporting a really stylish shaved head. He was happier that way. It meant no more washing of the hair and definitely no bugs! He was my best kid ever for hair washing until we had all those bug problems. We tried every treatment in the book, and the kids were miserable. It's not surprising that now he associates washing his hair with the misery of lice treatments and an eternity of yanking a lice comb through his hair. A fear like that is there for a reason, and the only way to help him overcome it is to give him positive experiences, something that could take a month, or it could take years. I wouldn't doubt if that was his fear as he's seen both babies and my hair washed out in a sink before. I wouldn't be surprised if that's why he thought he was sitting there.
Kids have fears for all kinds of logical reasons. A nasty fall can produce a fear of heights. Being attacked creates a fear of dogs. Seeing a house burned down can easily cause a fear of fire. I can't entirely blame my son for having a rational fear like that. I have a fear of pain. I have a fear of heights. Everyone's got fears. Still, I've faced my fear of pain to get piercings and to have three children. I've faced my fear of heights by going to the top of the Prudential Center in Boston, climbing trees, getting up on ladders and chairs to fix lights, and even getting up onto a friend's roof at one point so we could get some stuff that had been tossed up there. I have to admit, every moment I was certain I was going to fall off and die, but I didn't. Fear has it's place too. Without fear, I may have taken a lot more risks up on that roof. Why? Because I wasn't worried about getting hurt. Instead, I was cautious to be sure I had good footing. I took things one step at a time. My fear kept me in check and prevented me from doing something that wasn't well thought out and could have gotten me seriously hurt. There truly is a value to some rational fears.
That being said, let my kids be scared sometimes. Let them admit they're afraid. Let them show the world just what kind of stuff they're made of because they're capable of conquering those fears! Let them learn the valuable lesson of doing something they were once afraid of! I'm not going to dress it up in fancy words that downplay the emotion, though I have no problems giving them those tools to explain a full range of emotion.
Most importantly, my children will learn best from my own actions and words. I won't lie, I told my daughter I was absolutely terrified of airplanes when we were on our way to Boston to visit my family our first year down here. I wasn't lying! With every little patch of turbulence it was everything I could do to keep calm! My daughter, of course, was patting my hand and telling me that it was okay the whole time. I admitted to my kids that I was afraid of heights while standing on a chair to reach a light bulb that needed replacing. The kids helped that one along by constantly bumping into the chair and making me feel like I would fall. However, knowing I'm terrified of heights doesn't stop my daughter from climbing a giant tower at the playground, or my son from getting on top of every piece of furniture he can get on.
In the end, I'm not worried about my kids having fears. They'll tackle them when they're ready. In the case of my son, he's no longer afraid of the moon. He no longer thinks monsters live outside his window. He's even come to tackle a few scary Halloween masks (and probably would have done a better job of it on Halloween were he not so tired from skipping his nap). He even walked up to the scariest booth at the local safe trick-or-treat, done by a local bike group that was about as close to a haunted house as you could get for an open booth like that, all because he saw his sister and his friend go get some candy there, and he wasn't going to be shown up by a couple of girls! So yes, my little boy is quite the scaredy-cat, just like his mama, but he's also learning to be like his mother by facing his fears, one little step at a time.
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