Dealing with fears. - Part 1. (English / Polski)

 Wersja polska tutaj.

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                As I go about my day I see many situations involving other families and I like to observe how they relate to each other. In most cases, the things that I see are disturbing. I see adults hitting their children, laughing at them while they are in distress, and treating them like enemies. In my experience, most adults are at war with their children and you have to observe closely for only a few minutes to realize this. In this ongoing war, the adults will sometimes be inconvenienced by their child's fears and the only objective then becomes to eradicate them so that the adult can continue undisturbed. Some will claim that they do this for the good of the child, but underneath I see only contempt and disgust toward a child that doesn't behave as they "ought to". They are embarrassed if others see their child as anything less than extroverted and fearless. They are frustrated with these kinds of problems because they do not know how to help their child. I will share some recent examples below and consider how different the adult and child experiences can be.

                1. We went to a water park with these big slides where people have a lot of fun. The slides are for people who are over 42''. There is one exception - if the kid is shorter, a parent can go with him/her (some of the slides have innertubes so you can go with someone else together).

We were waiting for our turn and there was a big family in front of us. Around 10 people, mostly adults but they had this one little girl. It seems like she was around two years old, no more than two and a half. One woman was holding her, then she passed the girl to another woman. I think the second one was her mother. The girl was crying, she looked afraid, she said: "I don't want to!" The woman didn't seem to listen but there was a moment when she went, holding the girl, to the edge to show her everything below. It seemed to us like she just wanted to show everything to her and go down with her afterwards. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed later. A guy, maybe a father, was almost ready to go. He was on one of those pontoons I mentioned before. And then, when a lifeguard told him he was good to go, the woman quickly put the girl on his lap! The girl was crying so much, she kept saying how much she didn't want to go, she was not just afraid - she was panicked! She was moving her hands and her legs, trying to run away but the man was holding her very tightly while others were pushing them to go down. The girl was yelling very much but the people were laughing out loud, without any concerns about the girls' feelings.

Later I saw this girl once again. The same man was walking in front, then two girls and then this little girl was walking as the last one, looking at the ground, much slower, she looked very sad.

                2. We were at a place where you have a lot of trampolines around so people can jump and jump for the whole day. There was one place where you could jump into a huge pit of foam blocks and people were doing incredible things out there. But one girl, maybe four or five, hesitated and took a step back from the edge. Her teenage sister or a babysitter, or someone like this, ran toward and grabbed this little girl and threw her into the pit! The girl was crying and was visibly angry with her assailant and demanded that it never happen again. The teenage girl apologized and agreed.

                3. I was at a playground with Alicia and there was a family - parents and three kids. The youngest one was a girl of around three, then one boy around seven and another boy in the middle. The playground has monkey bars and kids can go up and then slide down a pole as firemen do. Alicia did it several times and then the boy wanted to do the same. He went up and he tried positioning himself for the slide down for a little bit. Alicia was trying to help him by saying how she did it. The boy got scared and didn't want to go forward or back. He then said he'd better just go down a different way (but there was none). Then his parents got up and they went closer to him. The man grabbed the boy's legs without saying a word and he raised them a little bit so they were in the air. Then the boy started to cry a little bit, telling the man to put his legs back onto the bar. The boy was holding the pole with his hands much stronger than before and I could see how tense he was. The woman was repeating: "go down, this is safe, we'll help you!" The boy said he didn't want to go down and he told the man once again to put his legs back. Then the man started to slowly pull the boy down the pole... The boy cried more than before. He was gripping the pole so tightly that it was difficult for him to move his hands, so it wasn't easy to get down. Once he was on the ground, he was still crying and the woman... spanked him on his butt! The boy stopped crying immediately. After this, he came closer to her and hugged her. She didn't return the hug.

                Some people's approaches say: "kids have to get over their fears! (...) They say they don't like something because they don't know it - the same with trying new kinds of food - they won't want to eat it until they try and, anyway, how can you say you're afraid of something if you don't know how it feels? (...) If they're forced to do something once, they'll get used to it and they'll see it's not scary! (...) If they're afraid of water, they need to be pushed more and more so they can get used to it. If you leave it like this, they won't be able to make friends in the future because they'll be afraid of everything! (...) Don't make wimps out of the kids! They need to know what life is about. (...) They're afraid of things because they don't know how much fun they'd have. (...) They don't think rationally, they'd jump from a bridge because they won't know how high it is and they might kill themselves. So sometimes you need to interfere in their lives because they know much less than you do." And many, many more.

(I took the examples above from the Internet.)

              So now, let me put those comments into my own words, into the way I understand it...

              Kids are not smart and they don't think the way older people want them to think because they don't know anything about life and things around. So that's why parents' role is to put stuff in their heads the way adults see everything, without letting kids find their own way. So then, when a kid is scared of something, the best way is to force him to do it, even if he's screaming, crying and saying how much he doesn't want to. If you let him be scared, you'll raise a wimp. The kid's reaction is just because he doesn't know what's waiting for him and, in a parent's eyes, it'll be fun so it's obvious the kid will like it, too. And then he'll just get used to it. His fear is irrational because he has no idea how it feels so just push him to do it then. Of course he'll be thankful once he gets over his fear by being forced to do what he's afraid of. The fear, the panic, the feeling of betrayal and lost trust will resolve by itself and vanish from the child's life never to resurface again.

                I suppose you read the examples I gave you above. Let's see just three more I can think of.

1. A boy is scared of big dogs; he hides behind a parent's legs when he sees one; no way he'll pet a dog bigger than a Chihuahua.

What the boy may think and feel: every dog he sees will bite him and he'll die; he imagines the dogs look at him thinking "I hate you"; he doesn't know if they're nice or not.

What others may think: a neighbor's dog is very friendly and has never bitten anyone; there's nothing to be scared of and the kid isn't in any danger; it's just his imagination and it's kind of cute when he's that scared; he shouldn't think about the worst case in the first place, at least not until he tries.

Would you: close this boy in a room full of big dogs that are trained to not bite but which he was still scared of, so the kid can "get over the fear" and "get used to" them?

2. A little girl has to go down the stairs alone without holding her parent's hand (the parent's hands are full); she's crying.

What the girl may think and feel: she's afraid; she can't reach the railing and it seems to her like the stairs are very high and she's too small to make it and may be seriously hurt or even die; she doesn't know how much time she needs to reach the bottom so what if she's too tired; she's afraid nobody will wait for her to go down the stairs and then she'll be left alone.

What others may think: this is just going down the stairs which is one of the easiest things in the world; nothing bad is likely to happen to her; this is just unreasonable hysteria; she sees her mother's hands are full and she just doesn't understand that her mother can't help her this time.

Would you: try to persuade her that going down stairs is not dangerous and that she should ignore her own natural sensations of fear and do something in spite of it?

3. A boy doesn't want to go to sleep, even if he's tired and it's very late; he's crying and each time his mother puts him in bed, he gets up and walks somewhere else.

What the boy may think and feel: he's afraid that when he falls asleep he'll stop breathing; he doesn't know that people can breathe while sleeping so he's trying his best not to fall asleep; he's afraid he'll die; he has no idea how the human body works; it seems to him like his mother doesn't care if he'll be alive in the morning or not.

What others may think: he just doesn't want to go to sleep; he'd rather stay up all night long and play; he is making it all up; he needs to sleep because he'll be tired tomorrow!

Would you: turn off the light, go out of the room, close and lock the door leaving the crying and scared boy inside to face his fears and see that nothing bad happens.

               

                And now let's take adults instead of children because they know much more about life... And yet still have similar fears.

1. A 25 year-old woman doesn't want to jump into water from some rocks when her friends do it without any problems.

What the woman may think and feel: she knows exactly how high it is and that the water is deep enough; she can swim but she's afraid that after she's deep under water, she won't be able to swim up and she'll drown.

What others may think: other people do it so they wonder why she doesn't want to; she's in panic which is irrational because she can swim; she shouldn't be that scared because it's deep so she won't break her spine.

Would you: push her down from the rocks to help her face her fears and see that nothing bad happens?

2. A 32 year-old woman is scared of cats and she runs away when she sees them.

What the woman may think and feel: she imagines the cat will scratch her to death; she can see cats as very scary and dangerous animals that want to hurt her; she doesn't want to risk being hurt in any way.

What others may think: it's funny and irrational for other people whose favorite pets are cats; they're so cute and cuddly; there's definitely no reason to be afraid of cats; this is a good thing to make jokes of.

Would you: laugh at her in a situation when she sees three cats and she's crying, her hands are shaking and she can't talk at all, to show her how irrational her fear is?

3. A father of three children doesn't want to go roller skating with them.

What the man may think and feel: he imagines he'll fall and people will laugh at him; he's afraid he'll feel humiliated and that people will make fun of him later over and over again; he doesn't know what people think; he won't be able to feel comfortable; he remembers a time when he fell on his knees and his wife couldn't stop laughing because it was "so funny".

What others may think: he's an adult; he's making a problem out of something that doesn't really exist; he is a wimp; he's acting like a baby.

Would you: force him to go and feel extremely stressed that he'll have this feeling he hates so that he will discover that nothing bad happens?

                I hope you can see how a person's fears can seem completely irrational and bizarre to another while ALSO being completely rational and real to the person with the fear. We do not have access to another person's reality. While it may be tempting to imagine what another is experiencing it is rarely accurate and can result in the other feeling misunderstood. The first challenge is to learn what the other person is experiencing. I say challenge because this requires first earning the trust of the other as well as briefly putting aside one's own reality while considering another's instead of imposing your own reality on them. I will discuss this at greater length in my next post.
Feel free to post a comment and to give me other examples if you have some!

Talk to you in two weeks!

Aga & Nathan