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| |    Fears in Preschool Children by Dr. Benjamin Spock reviewed by Robert Needlman, M.D., F.A.A.P. Imaginary worries are common among children ages three, four, and five. Anxieties are different at different age periods. New types of fear crop up fairly often around the ages of three and four--fear of the dark, of dogs, of fire engines, of death, of crippled people. Children's imaginations have now developed to the stage where they can put themselves in other people's shoes and picture dangers that they haven't actually experienced. Their curiosity is pushing out in all directions. They want to know not only the cause of everything, but what these things have to do with them. They overhear something about dying. They want to know what "dying" is. As soon as they get a dim idea they ask: "Do I have to die?" (See: Death: Answering Your Preschooler's Questions.) Tension makes fears worse These fears are more common in children who have been made tense from battles over such matters as feeding and toilet training, children whose imaginations have been overstimulated by scary stories or movies, or by too many warnings. Children who haven't had enough chance to develop their independence and outgoingness, or whose parents are too protective, are also often tense. The uneasiness accumulated before now seems to be crystallized by the child's new imagination into definite dread. (See: Are You Overprotective?.) All children have fears This may sound as if any child who develops a fear has been handled mistakenly in the past. Not at all. All children have fears. The world is still full of things they do not understand, and no matter how lovingly they have been raised, they recognize their own weakness and vulnerability. I think that some children are born more sensitive than others. Helping your child to cope It is not your job as a parent to banish all fears from your child's imagination. In fact, learning to face and conquer one's fears is an important lesson. Your job is to help your child learn constructive ways to cope with and conquer those fears. In the eloquent words of Selma Fraiberg in The Magic Years: "The future mental health of the child does not depend on the presence or absence of ogres in his fantasy life. It depends on the child's solution to the ogre problem."
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