Helping the insecure children overcome the fear of nightmares

Every evening at 8:00, I would close my eyes and take a deep breath. I had to ready myself for the next hour. It was bedtime, and this was tantamount to a round of emotional wrestling. Our six year old son was horrified at the prospects of sleeping in a room by himself, and although we had gone through a similar experience with our oldest son, this was on a much grander scale. This was fear out of control, a child consumed by his ideas and what-ifs.

It is neither unusual nor is it necessarily a reason for alarm for a perfectly peaceful, secure child to rather suddenly display signs of insecurity and phantom fears. If you think about it in a logical way, it actually makes sense. An infant can normally be held by a variety of people without any noticeable signs of stress, but at around six to eight months, she will suddenly become upset when taken by someone unfamiliar to her. This indicates she has begun to recognize and differentiate her caregivers and immediate family members from others. Often, this clinging phase is temporary, at least to a degree. It may, however, manifest itself several more times in a child's early years, as emotional and intellectual awareness increases. This doesn't always mean you can (or should) ignore these stages of uncertainty and fear.

Acknowledging a child's fear is paramount to helping him overcome it. Once this has been done, the child will feel he can trust you with the specific details of his fear. This is a very important step in the healing process. It is upon gaining a child's trust that parents can access whether something in the child's life has been the catalyst for the problem. If a child is dealing with a bully at the playground on a daily basis or, more seriously, if she is being manipulated by an adult, she may be unsure of how to verbally approach the problem. It can be difficult to pick up any signals she may be trying to send. You may have to gently ask specific questions to find out if someone has done something that has made her feel bad or uncomfortable. If you feel the problem is rooted in a serious physical or emotional threat to the child, it is imperative that you seek sound, professional counseling immediately.

Often, a young child's sudden fear or insecurities are due to his recent awareness of what he sees as a very possible scenario. An example would be if the child had seen even a clip from a violent movie or horror film, or even something as seemingly benign as overhearing kids telling ghost stories. His fear is grounded in his perception of the plausibility. While the possibility may seem more remote than being hit by a falling purple cow to you, it is obviously very real to the child, and that is what really matters.

Helping your child to overcome fear is a process. It will not be over simply because you tell him there is nothing to fear, nor, in great likelihood, will it end after one or two nights or checking his closets and under his bed. For us, it took formulating a plan with our son that he was comfortable with. Each night, after he was tucked in and his night light was on, we would check our watch and agree to come back in five minutes. We could not get preoccupied and check him late. That was a guarantee we had to make, and one we had to be careful not to break. The five-minute checks would continue for as long as he felt the need for us to check back in. The first night, we made four checks. On the fifth check, he was sound asleep. We continued our five minute routine for several weeks. Eventually, it was down to nothing but a "better safe than sorry" measure for him, and one or two checks would find him sleeping. Afterwards, when the old fear would raise up in his mind, we could go back over the past few weeks and look at more rationally. And for us weary but wiser parents, it was one phase down, a fascinating lifetime to go!