"Fear"- An obstacle for child's learning

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Permalink Reply by Bea Stanford on March 9, 2009 at 12:26pm

I think it’s about children self confidence. If we as parents will help them to boost their self-esteem they can overcome the fear. It’s what I believe in. Anyway, it's a very interesting subject and I hope to hear many voices.

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Permalink Reply by Joan on March 9, 2009 at 11:20pm

I think a child should feel safe and comfortable in her or his environment and parents and teachers should understand those needs, we can help our children by recognizing it.That’s my 2 cents.

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Permalink Reply by Edith Hagenaar on March 14, 2009 at 10:50am

Fear in children can be ignited by minor incidences, like a child commenting on his shoes at soccer practice. When the child does not know how to deal with this, and does not discuss it with his parents or teachers, it gets stuck and eventually the child may start to dislike or even fear soccer, leaving the parents wondering: why?
As a parent I always try to find out whether my kids had some issues during the day or previous days, and discuss them with them. Sometimes frustrations, small fears, etc. come up, and otherwise I would not have known about them. Apart from discussing this, sometimes some sort of closure is necessary, like forgiving the other child or affirming my own child, or a guided meditation.
Apart from these types of fears (which, if you don't deal with them, can grow out to be huge fears later on), there is also the non-logical fear: the fear that parents tend to dismiss because there is no reason. Fears like that there's a snake under the bed or a monster in the cupboard. I like to treat these fears as genuine, asserting the child's feelings - for the child the fear is very real, even though it may not be for us. Chasing the monster away, doing an energetic cleansing of the room, and affirming the childs strength (you are bigger, better, etc than the monster, you are the boss) helps the child relax and loose the fear.
Children also magnify parents' fears. Suppose a parent is afraid of his own dad dying, and refuses any discussion on the subject. The child gets the message: even talking about death is frightening, let alone the subject itself. It might develop a huge fear of death because of this.
Then there's the intuitive part. Children intuitively know which people to trust, and which to distrust - no matter why. When parents trust someone, but the child refuses to because he is scared for the person, either the child will override its own feelings if the parents keep pushing, or the child develops a feeling of being alone in his fears.
Anyway, I think I can talk about this for a long time and now I need to play with my son ;-)

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