The fears, where did they come from?

The presence of the fears depends on many reasons. For example, research has found that boys are less susceptible to the fears than any girls, and the boys who are raised in single-parent families have more the fears than their peers who live with both the parents. It was also found that the divorce of the parents affects the girls less than the boys, because the children tend to stay with their mother, and then the mother and daughter form a same-sex deada of the communication, which allows the girls to feel confident and not feel many fears. The boys, left without a father, do not receive the necessary male support, which affects the communication with the relatives, and as a result, an increase in the number of the fears.

The researchers also compared who is most susceptible to fears: the children from individual or communal apartments? The results were stunning. More fears were found in the children living in the separate apartments. Those children who live in communal apartments have less the fears, as they have more opportunities to communicate with their peers.

However, regardless of whether the children are brought up in the families both full and incomplete, live as in the separate apartments as the communal apartments, they feel more fear if their parents often quarrel with each other. Especially for four or five-year-olds children who already understand what a conflict between people close to them, and emotionally experiencing it. The anxiety that arises in this case soon turns into the fears that arise also because the child does not have the ability to influence the outcome of the conflict of the parents, and therefore feels helpless. By the way, the girls are more emotional than the boys, and therefore show greater sensitivity to the conflicts of the parents and therefore suffer more from the fears.

In the study, researchers also found a close relationship between the number of the fears in the children and their parents. The fears, as it turned out, can even be inherited! This, of course, is not about their genetic origin, but a certain tendency and a sense of anxiety about this or that occasion. If the mother was terrified of the dark as a child, the same fear can be confirmed by her daughter. In addition, if an adult experiences a particular fear, the child is very sensitive and involuntarily begins to be afraid of the same thing.

 

It is necessary to remember that the parent, who constantly feels a sense of anxiety, subconsciously tries to protect from such a baby’s psyche. He does not suspect that he is doing him a disservice, because the child in this case is brought up in an artificial environment, and therefore does not develop the skills of the psychological protection: avoids everything that causes the fear, instead of learning to actively overcome it.

 

The excessive guardianship can also affect the formation of the fears in the child. Consider this example.

 

A mother gave birth to Misha late, at the age of thirty-five, after ten years of hopelessly trying to get pregnant. Naturally, she was constantly concerned about the real and perceived the dangers to her son’s health. She overprotected him, invited the doctors all the time, terribly worried at the slightest bruise or scratches, endlessly asked the baby about how he feels it is clear that the child involuntarily, in the course of everyday communication, passed the fears of the mother. Misha became afraid of everything too. He refused to play with the boys and the girls in the sandbox (“what if they beat me?”), was afraid to take any medicine (“I know it will hurt me!”), and at night woke up with shouts: “I will be taken away from my mother by an evil uncle!” Against the background of the activated fears, the boy developed a neurosis, and the reason for this was the behavior of his own mother, who thinks that she wants him only good.

And the psychologist, before starting to help four-year-old Misha get rid of the fears, had to first conduct an explanatory.

 

On the basis of the considered case we will make a conclusion that the excessive care, overprotection does not benefit the child, and they can become the cause of any different fears. However, we emphasize that if the parents, on the contrary, do not show love for their baby, do not emotionally perceive the child; he can also develop a variety of the fears. The child does not feel protected, he has no one to turn to when he is experiencing the emotional discomfort, and he begins to feel the hostility of the environment. Thus, knowing about the relationships in the family, you can state a greater or lesser severity of the fears in the children.

It is often the parents themselves, without thinking about the consequences; instill the fear in the child with various threats: “You will behave badly, I will call a policeman”, “You will not obey, I will give you to an orphanage”, "You will not eat porridge, and I will give you an injection". In other words, they sometimes deliberately cause the fear in the child, and then wonder: “And what is it that my Masha began to cry out at night? “Why does my Petechka refuses to walk in the yard, if I do not hold his hand?”

 

Such the threats are fraught with the other consequences. After all, if the children of preschool age are afraid of older threats (because the child believes in the reality of the words of the adults), the older children react differently: they feel insulted, humiliated, which undermines their faith in themselves and their strength.

 

In no case adults should also utter “wishes” such as “Oh, so you choked!”, “Damn you!”, because such the words are related to the theme of the life and the death, causing the child to aggravate the corresponding thoughts and as a result – the fear of the possible troubles.

The fears in the baby can also occur when imitating the peers. A small child unconsciously copies other people and thus masters the world. When the baby comes home and tells you the “news”: “Katya is afraid of the Snake Gorynych, and I am also afraid of him” – know that before you are a typical example of the fear-imitation.

All of the above the factors affect the occurrence of the fears in all children. Separately, we note that they can occur in the connection with the actual experienced danger and fear. If a child has been attacked, severely beaten, or bitten by a dog, all of this is more or less reflected in his further emotional development. When the events that poses a real threat to the child’s life, a strong fright is recorded in his memory. It is often it does not pass, but occurs systematically under the circumstances similar to the original case that caused the baby to fear.