What Should I Say When My Kid Is Afraid?

You're listening to good inside with Dr. Becky. I have so many ideas, strategies and scripts to share with you right after a word from our sponsor. Hi, I'm Dr. Becky and this is Good Inside. I'm a clinical psychologist and mom of three on a mission to rethink the way we raise our children. I love translating deep thoughts about parenting into practical, actionable strategies that you can use in your home right away. One of my core beliefs is that we are all doing the best we can with the resources we have available to us in that moment. So even as we struggle and even as we are having a hard time on the outside, we remain Good inside. Today I'm going to be answering some questions from parents about their kids fears. And before we jump into those specific questions, let me set a baseline. Kids have fears. It's normal for kids to have fears. Fear. Fear of the dark, fear of monsters under their bed, fear of being left alone somewhere, fear of ice cream being too cold. Right. There are so many things kids can be scared of and a common theme often is something unpredictable or something they didn't want to have happen and something that brings up a feeling of being out of control. Now there's so many different things we're gonna talk about today, but here's something I want everyone to keep in mind. Whenever a child has a fear, we either have the option to connect to our child and support our child so our child doesn't feel alone in the fear, or we can try to convince our child out of a fear. Whenever we try to convince a child out of the fear, our child is still left with the feelings of threat and danger. And now not only does a child have those feelings, but they have aloneness because they don't feel our support. So there's going to be a theme to all my responses today, which is, once your child has a fear, let's take the sensations in his body seriously. Even if the content, which might be about ghosts or it might be about monsters in the closet, feels irrational to us. With that in mind, let's jump in. Our first caller is Julie from New York who has a question about her four year old.

Hi, Dr. Becky. My name is Julie and my daughter is Vivi. She's four years old. I was calling because we're kind of navigating something a little tricky right now with her. So we came home the other day and we had these aunts that like all of a sudden had just appeared in her closet kind of out of nowhere. And anyway, we had, you know, our super come up and he sprayed for them and, and the ants are now are gone. But she keeps on bringing up the ants and keeps asking us, are they going to come back. She seems to be very afraid of these ants. And even though we tell her, vivie, they're not going to come back, they're really little. You're way bigger than these ants. There's nothing to worry about. She's still clearly very scared and kind of fixated on this ant thing. So I would love if you have any advice about how to help our daughter. Process was obviously, you know, something she's kind of stuck on right now. Thanks very much.

Bye. Thank you so much, Julie, for calling in and sharing the story. So let's think about what's really happening for kids when they develop big fears. Our kids develop fears, they develop anxiety when something unexpected and unwanted happens. Our kids are trying to figure out probably at all moments what is going on in the world around me and am I safe? Kids are always trying to figure out if they're safe. And so much of their sense of safety comes from feeling like things are predictable. So when Vivi sees bugs, she's not thinking, oh, I didn't expect that. But bugs are pretty small and I'm much larger and these aren't dangerous to me, so I'm fine. What's happening for her is this. I didn't ever think something like this would happen that wasn't supposed to happen. No one told me this would happen. Vivi isn't really scared of the bugs. Kids aren't really scared of bugs. They're scared that things are unexpected and out of control. Events that are unexpected bring up anxiety and fear because they lead kids to question how. How predictable and reliable their world actually is. So then when we jump in and intervene just at the level of logic and explaining, see, you're so big and the bugs are so small, it doesn't connect because it's not about the bugs, it's about the surprise. So let's jump into some strategies with that type of understanding. Strategy one, telling the story of what happened. When we tell a story over and over without adding a solution, we're kind of just narrating it over and over. What we do is we add coherence to something that was incoherent. We add understanding and predictability to something that felt surprising and unexpected. And when we do this, we actually shift how it feels in a child's body because we layer on all those elements of safety to all of the elements that made everything feel unsafe. So what would this really look like? Hey, you know what I'm thinking about? That day that we went into your room and there were ants. There was your bed. Yeah. We knew that. There was your dresser. Yep. And then, ooh, there were bugs. We didn't expect them to be there, but they were. And then we did some things, and then they went away. Then it happened again. We didn't expect that Pause. Right. Even if we do nothing else but say that. And then maybe I would actually say, I just want to say that all again because it's so important. And I would just say it again. We're actually shifting something inside of our child's body. And maybe you even hear it as I'm kind of saying it with a type of rhythm right now. I have a story. Instead of a surprise, I might even add this. When we have something happen that we don't expect. Ooh. That can feel really tricky in our body. Right. Again, we're just kind of adding a way for a child to understand what happened and to understand their feeling. Kids often love when we do this. They might even say, will you tell me that story again? They kind of know on some level that they crave this coherent narrative and that that is often what's more healing and soothing than anything else. So after telling the story of what happened and adding that coherence, another strategy that could be useful is anything that would add a agency we want to help our kids access feeling more in control and even feeling kind of powerful, as in, there's something I can do instead of this thing was done to me. So in the case of the ants, I think Vivi might really like an ants go away spray. You can make it with water, a bottle that says ants go away spray, or you can get her some safe cleaning solution and tell her, here's something you can spray around your room. Right. And what that does for her is it gives her another routine again. Instead of feeling like this thing that was totally unexpected happened to her and she's just waiting for it maybe to happen again. Now there's a way where she can feel a little more in control and she has something to do. We all like feeling more powerful relative to feeling more powerless, and this helps her achieve that. Let's hear from Deanne, who has a question about her sons.

Hey, Dr. Becky. My name is Deanne, and I'm from Portland, Oregon, and I have two boys that are 4 and 6. And I have a question about when your child is afraid of a space in your home or the dark Our situation has been both, but currently we moved into a new home about eight months ago that has a basement which is very new and you know, to the kids experience. And so my 6 year old specifically will now really have resistance to being in the basement by himself at any point. And there's been times where I ask him questions, trying to kind of get to the root of it, but then I also struggle with just that balance of trying to let him have those feelings and see, you know, how time progresses and if this is something long term, but. But then also not wanting to bring a whole lot of like unnecessary fear to the situation, you know, by like probing with specific ideas. And also I know there's developmental things and so I'm wondering, you know, is it just something that I wait for? But I would just be really interested in if you have any phrases or scripting to use again when a child is afraid of either like a space in the home or the dark or a situation where, you know, you can't always necessarily be with them. And so how can we empower our children, like through phrases? Thank you.

So, first of all, deanne, I have to tell you, I've been in such a similar situation with my own kids where certain areas of the house feel scary, where they don't want to go alone. And I know for me, I want to both validate what's happening for my kids and I also want them to be resilient and kind of get through this. So I really appreciate what's happening for you. I want to talk about three different strategies, and I want to start with one that I feel is a baseline for talking with kids about fears and actually probably about anything. And I guess if I had to name it, I would call it I believe you. So here's kind of a way to start the conversation that to me leads to all kind of productive interventions around fears. There's something about Plank that feels bad to you. I believe you. So in your situation, there's something about going to the basement alone that feels bad to you. I believe you. Right. This could be used for any fears with any kids. There's something about walking alone to that side of the house that feels bad to you. I believe you. There's something about your room when it's dark that feels bad to you. I believe you. Right. And what are we doing here? What? Well, in order for our kids to give us more information, to open up for us to really fully understand something so then we can intervene, we have to show our kids that we're Interested in what's happening for them and that we trust them. We have to validate the feelings of their fear so we can better understand it and then they can start to find their resilience. When, with our help. I think often we worry that if we validate a kid's fear, we'll make the fear worse. And yet actually the opposite is true. We're not actually validating that the thing that they say is so scary is so horrible. What we're validating is that the feeling they feel in their bodies is real. And that is actually not only key to overcoming a fear, it's key to building a kid's confidence. We don't want to convince our kids that they shouldn't be scared of the things that they are scared of, because if we even are, quote, successful in doing that, what we leave our kid with is this. Oh, I guess I don't really understand what scares me. I thought that felt bad, but my parent convinced me I shouldn't feel that way. So I guess other people know how I should feel better than I do know how I feel. That's not something we ever want to encourage. We do not want to build that circuit. We don't want our kids to think ever that someone outside them knows how they feel better than they do in their own bodies. We don't want our kids to learn to doubt their intuition to set the stage to build resilience. We have to start by validating the feeling. So again, there's something about going to the basement that feels bad to you. I believe you. And then maybe I'd go to, can you tell me more about that? Right. Pause or I wonder what part of it is the worst right now. I don't expect my kid to say back to me, well, mom, I'm so glad you asked. Actually, here's the worst part of it. We actually are less concerned in getting answers as we are in establishing that we are validating what's happening for our kids and we're interested in it. We actually want our kids to become more curious about their fears because when they get more curious, they don't feel the need to shut it down. So we're kind of modeling this curiosity so they can absorb it. It step two or strategy two. We want to add connection inside the fear. That might feel very confusing. So let me explain what I mean. We want to get into the fear with our kids so our kid is less alone. We can do this in a myriad of ways. And what comes to mind right now for you is something like this. I want to do something kind of interesting. I want to walk down the stairs to the basement very slowly, and I want you to tell me more. Which stair starts that kind of scary feeling? Now, does it really matter whether it's the second stair or fifth stair or ninth stair? No, it doesn't matter. But what we're doing is instead of this fear coming up and it just all being bad and there's nothing I can do about it, we're opening up space. We're adding our relationship, our curiosity, our connection, our presence into something within the fear. And just by doing that, the fear actually changes. We now have a little space between the fear and the shutdown action. And we have that space because of our presence and curiosity. When you're doing that, you might just say something simple like, I'm glad we're doing this. This feels important. I'm so glad to learn more about this and just pause there and trust that you've already started to shift things a little bit. Strategy 3. Teach your kid a skill through a story about yourself. Right. So that's kind of a nuanced strategy. Why? When our kids are really scared and they feel overwhelmed, it's hard for them to take in a skill. One of the things that lowers defensiveness is feeling seen and feeling normalized. So when you tell them a story about yourself that makes them feel like you get it because you might have been through something similar, then you can kind of teach a skill through something you did when you were younger, which makes it more likely for your child to actually take this in. So what might this look like? You know, when I was your age, basements felt really scary to me too. I don't know if I ever told you that they did. And actually one of the things I learned to do is I would take this picture of my mom. My mom taught me this. She said, why don't you take a picture of me? And when you're walking down the stairs, say three things. My mom is near. I'm safe in the dark. I can do this. My mom is near. I'm safe in the dark. I can do this. And I have to tell you the truth, it first, it felt really weird and I don't even know if it helped that much, but there was a day where it just felt a little better to go down one more stair and one more. And I don't know, might be something you want to try. So again, I'm not being heavy handed, but what I'm doing is I'm really sharing a coping mechanism and it makes a child feel less alone. So in addition to learning the skill, they're gaining our kind of connection and support and solidarity. Deanne One more idea that I think is going to be helpful for your kids and that I think is helpful for all of us, for ourselves and for our kids at any age, whether they have anxieties or not. And it's teaching a kid how to do a good deep breath. I teach kids how to do this by using the idea of a hot cocoa breath, which is where you teach a kid to kind of hold a cup of hot cocoa or imagine it's in front of them and it's super hot. And what they want to do is breathe in and really smell that delicious hot chocolate and do a deep breath. So that smell goes all the way to their belly. And then here's the trick on your out breath, we want to imagine we have a straw in our mouth because when we blow out slowly and control our out breath through pursing our lips, we actually activate our parasympathetic nervous system by having a longer out breath than in breath. To me, this is something to teach your kids and practice throughout the day and then it can be incorporated into those moments where our kids feel scared. Our final caller, Cassidy, has a question about her six year old.

Hi Dr. Becke, my name is Cassidy. I have a three year old and a six year old tomorrow. We are trying to do some lessons with our almost 6 year old and we're struggling with fear. She wants to do swim lessons. She's excited about swim lessons, but when we get to the pool there's a lot of fear and a lot of resistance. How do I balance encouraging her to take risks with the authentic fear that she feels and the resistance that she has to taking those risks? Thanks so much, Cassidy.

Thank you for this really thoughtful question. And I love that you referred to something that I think about all the time with my own kids, with families I work with, which is how do we respect a kid's hesitation? Right. In some ways that's something we want to help a kid feel okay about, to be hesitant to try new things. And how do we encourage our kids at the same time to kind of be bold and be brave and kind of conquer some of their fears? Right. And I think doing both of those is key to helping our kids who might be anxious or fearful. And here's what I mean by that. I'm a big fan of parts language. I use this all the time with adults in my private practice and I Encourage families to use this language early on with kids. And here's what that really means. I imagine you saying to your daughter before the next swim lesson, hopefully even a few days before. Does it ever feel like there's a part of you that's so excited for swim? It's like, ooh, I can't wait to swim. And I'm gonna swim, and I'll be in the water and I'm gonna do strokes, and I'm gonna go into the water. Oh, it's so, so, so fun. And then there's a different part of you that kind of shows up when you get near the pool. And that part says, ooh, I don't know. It's so wet. I don't know about going in. It's so interesting. And here's the thing, sweetie. I have both parts in me, too. When I do something that's kind of new, I have a part of me that's excited, and I have a part of me that's a little worried. And here's something kind of interesting. It's okay to have both parts. It's okay to have both feelings. They're really, really normal. So here's the next thing I was thinking about. One of the things that helps me when I do something new is practice, right? And what are we doing here? I'll step outside that role play for a second. Cassidy, one of the things we wanna do is help our kids feel comfortable in that hesitation when it comes up. And the more we predict with them that it's going to come, the more that they can say to that part, oh, I knew you'd be here. It's okay to feel hesitant, but if that part takes them by surprise, then it usually takes over and acts itself out. So given you're talking about swim, I can't not think about the use of the bath, Right? If you have a bathtub in your home, and it might sound something like this again, the lesson's on Saturday, and now it's Wednesday. And I've maybe laid some of the groundwork by saying, I have those parts of me, too. Maybe now, the next day I'd say, let's pretend the bath is the swimming pool. I know, it's so ridiculous. Maybe when you get in a swimsuit, maybe I'll get in it too. And I'm gonna say, okay, sweetie, time to go to swim. And you know what's gonna happen probably on the way there? Maybe that excited voice. Me, excited, excited. But let's get ready for that kind of nervous voice. And Then I'd walk my daughter to the bath, right, and say, here's the pool. And then when I'm literally outside the bath with my daughter, right, in preparation, I'd want to teach her a skill right there. And I'd say, here's something interesting about being nervous. We can be nervous and be brave. Do you know that so many times we feel. Feel like to be brave, we're supposed to not be nervous. Actually, being brave sometimes means recognizing you're nervous and taking a deep breath and then seeing how you feel. So we're here in the pool, and let's say this to ourselves. Me too. Oh, it's okay to be nervous. It's okay to be nervous. I'm safe. I can do a little at a time. It's okay to be nervous. I am safe. Safe. I can do a little at a time. And then I would slowly get into the pool. Now, if this was my child, probably my child would say, mom, it's. It's a bath. I'll just get right in. See, I did it. And I'd say, ooh, I know, because it's the bath. But when the time the pool comes, by the time the pool comes, it might feel harder. So let's just practice the thing that might be helpful when it's harder, because when we practice something in advance, it's a little easier to do in that moment. Right? I kind of call some of this emotional vaccination. We kind of predict the feelings that might come in advance, and it allows us to build coping skills almost within that metaphor, kind of emotion regulation antibody. So when the real thing comes, our child, number one, feels normalized, feels they can be brave and nervous, and already has practiced pairing a coping skill with that set of feelings because we've done it in advance. I hope that's useful. I'm going to be really curious to see how that goes in your home, Cassidy. One more idea to kind of bring a bunch of other strategies together. After the swim lesson, you can tell the story with your daughter of all kind of the different feelings that she had and kind of these different parts and weave a coherent narrative, which, again, always helps our kids feel more in control because they better understand what's happening. It might sound like this as you're kind of leaving the swim area, huh? So much happened today. We were walking to swim. You are super excited. Then those nervous feelings came up, and we talked to that nervous part of us, and one of the things we both know is we can be nervous and be brave at the same time. And then I saw you go into the pool little by little until you are comfortable enough to go under the water. Huh? And then pause. Watch your child as she processes this. And our kids feel so proud when they hear the narrative of everything they did. So right now I'm thinking about all of these strategies we've reviewed to help our kids with their fears. And I want to end by talking about a big idea that I think is critical for us to consider so we can access those strategies with our kids. I think we have to look at our own fears that talking to our kids about their fears will make things worse. One of the reasons our kids fears get as big as they do is that our kids feel alone and they feel confused. It's not the talking about fears that makes the fear worse, it's the being alone with the fears. It's the not talking about them that they can't be named, that they're not mentionable that actually leads these uncomfortable feelings to balloon into something much larger. Let's bring it all together with three key takeaways. 1. We don't want to convince our child out of their fears. We think we're making a problem better, but we're actually teaching our kids to doubt their feelings and perceptions. 2. So many fears in kids are about being surprised or expecting one thing and having something else happen. So instead of being caught up in what we might think is something illogical or ridiculous, ridiculous or actually so small, speak to this violation in expectations so your child feels seen and supported. 3. Infuse your presence. Ask detailed questions about the topic of your kid's fear. This helps your child feel your support in the fear, which makes a child less alone and more able to tolerate the uncomfortable feelings. Thank you Julie, Deanne and Cassidy for calling in and helping us think through fears together. Thanks for listening to Good Inside. If you're looking for more on this topic, definitely check out my Anxiety and Worry in Kids Workshop where I do an even deeper dive. Let's stay connected@goodinside.com you can sign up for workshop and subscribe to Good Insider, my weekly email with scripts and strategies delivered right to your inbox. And for more ideas and tips, check out my Instagram Dr. Beckyoodinside. Good inside is produced by Beth Rowe and Brad Gage and executive produced by Erica Belsky and me, Dr. Becky please rate and review our show. Let us know what you think and what resonated. I actually do read each and every review, so please know that your feedback is meaningful to me. Let's end by placing our hands on our hearts and reminding ourselves. Even as I struggle and even as I have a hard time on the outside, I remain good inside.