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If your child is suffering from ongoing irrational fears, it may be that some counselling is required.

In what follows, we’re discussing fear symptoms in children typically under-5. Different symptoms and treatments may apply in the case of older children.

Understanding Irrational fear

It’s perfectly normal for children to be naturally afraid or at least very timid when dealing with unknown things. Strangers, unfamiliar locations, the dark, spiders or a boisterous dog (etc.,) can all have a child rushing to cling to a parent for reassurance.

Many of these fears and your child’s reaction to them are very routine and are probably linked to our deep-seated animal survival instincts. Children that seemingly demonstrate no such timidity or caution may well be unusual.

However, in all these cases it is usually possible to understand what is causing your child’s reaction. In other circumstances, attribution may be more difficult.

Children’s irrational fears

Children can sometimes become frightened by very odd things that are difficult for parents and adults to understand. Just a sample of such might include children becoming terrified by:

• breakfast cereal;
• their mother’s coat;
• a stuffed toy;
• water wings;
• clouds;
• trees.

Symptoms

• Young children affected by fear may:
• start to shake uncontrollably;
• cry/scream or conversely, go unusually quiet;
• go and stand in a corner and turn their back on the object;
• demonstrate a very white-looking face and wider eyes;
• cover their face with their hands;
• revert to baby-speak if they’re already speaking well or speak gibberish;
• run to you to be picked up, burying their face in you as they do so;
• vomit.

Causes

Depending upon the age of your child, they may be able to tell you what they’re afraid of but even if they have a good vocabulary and speak well, they might still struggle to articulate what the problem is.

That means you’ll need to play ‘fear detective’ and use gentle questioning, with much reassurance, before you’ll be able to be sure you understand the cause.

Trying questions and answers can be useful, as is a tour of the room looking at things, with your child secure and reassured in your arms.

Discussions

Once you’re sure you know what the problem is, never dismiss your child’s fear as “silly”. Whatever the cause, it is probably very real to them.

In addition, rushing up to confront the cause to show it’s harmless isn’t always recommended.

Most experts recommend instead a gentle discussion with your child. Try to ask them to explain why they’re frightened and explain in return why they have nothing to fear.

Invite them to ask you to go to the thing and show it is safe. Distraction is also very useful in some cases, as getting them to focus on something else like a toy and playing with you may well be all that’s required. Shortly afterwards, your child may well have forgotten the incident and the item or ‘thing’ concerned.

Why does this happen?

The causes or sudden outbursts of irrational fear are poorly understood.

Many are probably linked to a child’s developing and possibly over-active imagination. They may have been previously frightened by something else and have erroneously seen the cause as something like it. Even from a young age, some children in pre-schooling may try to frighten other children with stories they’ve heard from older siblings etc.

It might also be “nightmare echoes”, whereby an image has suddenly reminded your child of a recent nightmare.

In the vast majority of such cases, this is a relatively minor part of a child’s growing-up experience and such fear outbursts usually resolve themselves through parental reassurance alone.

When help may be required

You might need to consult a specialist in child development if:

• your daycare or preschool centre reports that the child’s irrational fears are frequent and are inhibiting their integration into activities. Most such centres will have vast experience with minor childhood fears and will recognise those that are unusual;
• over a perhaps 12-month period, your child is experiencing increasing irrational fear attacks despite your attempts to offer reassurance and counselling etc;
• the attacks are accompanied by serious physical symptoms such as difficulty in breathing, vomiting or a loss of bladder/bowel control;
• the attacks are becoming severe and a ‘daytime nightmare’ in nature.

Do remember though that such complications are very rare. Most irrational fear attacks pass quickly and naturally in a child’s development