Children and Scary Thoughts

One of the most valuable tools we can teach as parents is how to help children manage scary thoughts.

As a child I was terrified of fire. Just ask my parents! My mom said at about 18-months-old she put me in a play pen in front of our fire place (that had the doors closed) to stay warm and I freaked out. That was the first time she remembered me being afraid of fire.

The fear of fire persisted until the summer of 1988, when I was 9-years-old. Anyone who grew up in Montana in 1988 will remember this summer as one of the worst forest fire seasons the state has ever seen. It is the year that a significant amount of Yellowstone Park burned down.

Yellowstone wasn’t the only place that burned that year. I was outside playing with my friends on August 9th of 1988 when I saw a plume of smoke not too far in the distance. That was the beginning of the 1988 Warm Springs Creek Fire that was very close to my house and ended up burning around 50,000 acres of land. Many of my friends ended up having to evacuate.

According to my mom, I was so distraught over the fire at one point, my aunt took us up to her cabin to get away from the fire and the smoke. Anyone who has experienced a forest fire close by knows how awful the whole experience it.

I tell this story because one might think that my fear of fire was worse after this summer, however my mom and I have no recollection of me having a fear of fire after this summer. It was as if I faced my fear, realized I was okay, and I was able to move on.

I reflected on my childhood fears as I recently counseled three of my children about their fears. As all children have fears, I think it is valuable to find ways to help them manage their fears, not only so they don’t sleep in our beds with us at night, but because they will experience many fears as they grow up and it’s important to help them understand that they can do hard things. Confronting our fears and the negative feelings associated with them are hard things!

I have found that helping children learn to accept and acknowledge their fears is the first step to resolution. As parents, we shouldn’t discount their fears and say things like “That’s silly, of course zombies aren’t real, why would you be afraid of that!” or “You’ll be fine, don’t worry about it.” How invalidating for a child!

A better approach would be “Wow, it sure makes sense that you’d be afraid of zombies and you’re feeling scared! That dream does sound pretty scary!” or “It makes sense that you are feeling scared, those kinds of thoughts would make anyone feel scared!”

A great way to help kids deal with the scary thoughts is through drawing whatever comes to mind for them. This type of activity will help them to not resist what they are feeling. Resisting the negative thought and feeling can often lead to focusing more on it.

I recently was struggling with my 6-year-old who was scared of zombies from something his older brother said about zombies. I told him to draw the dream or draw anything about how he was feeling.

Here is what he ended up drawing :

This is a drawing of his family in our house being surrounded by God and angels. He drew this two nights in a row to help him sleep. It helped him focus his thoughts on his loving family and God. It was amazing how after he drew it he felt immediately better.

Don’t underestimate the power of the arts to express emotions. Art, music, and dance are especially important for children as a means of expressing feelings because they often cannot articulate what they are feeling. They also may not write very well and journaling would be difficult.

With my son I felt like I succeeded this time around. I did not discount his feelings, he faced his fears as we talked about them, I allowed him to cry, and then we found a way for him to experience his feelings and focus on more positive thoughts.

As an adult I still use this technique except I usually write it out. Remember the phrase “It makes sense that you would feel (insert feeling)” because it does makes sense why people feel the way they do when they think what they are thinking.

It’s the thought model. Scary thought=scary feeling, happy thought=happy feeling.