Childhood fears are very common and respond to situations in which children are not able to control at a rational level a fact that puts them on alert. There are children who fear darkness, loud noises, loneliness (being alone) and there are those who fear animals.
This is relatively problematic, because the most normal thing when you are walking on the street is that you cross with one or more dogs and maybe some stray cat. If the fear is important enough, it can cause our son or daughter to take the thing of going out to the street very badly, to the point that, to which a dog sees in the distance, it is paralyzed and expectant and chooses to hide behind of us, want to cross the street or similar. What can we do if we see ourselves in this situation?
Children, like adults, have the right to fear
Are you afraid of spiders? Maybe you fear the dark? And the needles? Because as a nurse, there are many adults who have punctured who have confessed to me that they have "panic" to the needles. They don't look, they turn their faces, they close their eyes, they try to evade the mind, they talk and talk, kidnapped by anxiety, and some, a few, even pass out.
Then you finish and they tell you that "if it's nothing, if the worst is that it hardly hurts, but I can't control it." And the definition cannot be better: it is nothing important, there really is no reason to feel fear, but the emotion is so strong, so intense, that they are unable to control it rationally.
Well, if adults have our visible fears and our hidden fears, if we have our shadows, if we have those recesses, those secrets that we would never confess, then we would be exposed and fragile, how can children not have fears too?
I say this because the last thing we have to do, as parents, is to take away the right to be afraid and, instead of minimizing it and treating it as a "come, pull, walk, do nothing", we should put ourselves in their place and help them to overcome it little by little.
Imagine a huge dog
Look at the size of a child and put a dog to the side. Many times the animal is as tall as the child. Imagine now that the dogs were as big as we are. Wouldn't you really be afraid of any dog? Because there are some with jaws that better not to imagine what they are capable of doing. If they increase in size, more than one would stay at home.
Come on, you don't do anything, walk!
We parents are usually right when we tell a child "he does nothing", because in reality, most dogs do no harm. As they approach, they smell you, and sometimes if they feel that you are afraid, that you go with fear, they lose your respect and approach with more decision. This may be enough for a child who fears animals to continue to fear the same, or perhaps even more, because it is enough that he approaches to try to get along with one and that he tries to climb, approach him to suck his hands or try to steal the sandwich, so that fear takes hold of him, he starts running or crying and the picture can even get worse if the dog goes behind.
How to help them
How to help them? Well, in the same way that we would like to overcome our fears, little by little, with love, and not at once. Already, I know that some people say that sometimes the best thing is shock therapy, but we talk about children and something very severe could be very harmful. It is better to bring animals to their lives from respect, patience and affection.
For this we will have to do a search for family or friends with dogs and select them a little based on size and based on character. Ideally, start with small and relatively quiet dogs, so that our child sees that they are not as dangerous as he thinks. It is very likely that on an afternoon of visit you realize that you can live with the dog and that you can even play with him, feed him, etc. If there is not much progress in one afternoon, then try another day. As many as it takes to gain confidence. Once you gain confidence with one we can try another, also small, somewhat more nervous, or perhaps a slightly larger one.
We will always do this together, that is, the boy with us, if it is necessary in our arms, so that when we see that we interact with the dog, and that it does nothing to us, they begin to wonder what would happen if they did the same.
It is slow, it is not something that is always easily solved, but little by little they learn and internalize new experiences and learnings and at the same time lose their fears.
Photos | USFWSmidwest, deanwissing on Flickr
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