Learn how you may be unintentionally reinforcing your child’s fears and then gradually stop doing it. If you have read some of my previous blog entries or the content on my website, you will understand how easy it can be to reinforce a child’s fears in the long run in your attempts to quell their distress in the moment.
How do you respond to your child when her fears are triggered? Keep a log of your responses for a few days. Include in your log: the date, situation, what you observed your child to be fearful of, what you did or said, and how distressed (on a scale of 1-10) your child appeared to be. Use descriptive, objective terms in your log. Usually, specific situations trigger fear and anxiety in your child. Determine which situations are trigger situations and observe the patterns in your responses.
Examine your log. How did you typically respond when your child expressed his anxiety? Did you repeatedly answer your child’s pleas for explanations to quell his fears about particular situations? Did you rush to his side to comfort him the minute he entered the feared situation? Did you help him avoid the feared situation or alter the situation so it would be less scary? If you did anything similar to the behaviors I just noted, you are very likely reinforcing your child’s fears. In the short run you may quell his distress, but in the long run you are making your child’s fears bigger.
Some parents have very low tolerance for their child’s distress: they want to jump in and rescue them and make it all better rapidly. Some children, on the other hand, have a low tolerance for their own distress and are very reactive, causing disruptive scenes, etc. Quite often, both cases are true: the child is very reactive and the parent has trouble tolerating the child’s distress. This can make it challenging for a parent to know how best to respond when their child exhibits anxiety.
Once you have determined how you respond to your child’s fears and, most importantly, which responses reinforce his fears, you must work to gradually change how you respond.
Here is an example that might be useful in conveying this important issue. Last week, I was walking my dog (a large black standard poodle) on a wide road dedicated to cyclists and pedestrians. As I approached a father and his 2 young children I noticed that his daughter was sitting on the curb, happily adjusting her equipment and having a juice break. The minute the father saw my dog, before the little girl said or did a thing, he rushed to her side, stating, “It’s O.K., I’m here.” The father obviously anticipated that the girl would be scared, which she indeed may have. The problem with his behavior is that he is actively reinforcing his daughter’s fear: he is giving her brain the message that she can’t be O.K. around a dog without his protection.
What to do instead? Work on solving the problem and stop those behaviors! If your child is, for example, fearful of dogs, gradually expose her to dogs in a gradual manner. Start with dog situations that are not too scary and gradually move up the ladder to exposing her to situations that are more difficult. For example, some children are so frightened of dogs, that simply exposing them to pictures of dogs elicits distress. If that is the case with your child, do picture exposures until your child’s brain learns not to be afraid of the pictures, then graduate to sitting in the car and looking at dogs until your child is not afraid of that, then graduate to getting close to leashed dogs, etc. Be creative! Reward your child for her exposure efforts.
Parents, pay attention to your behaviors! It is far better for your child if you maintain a matter of fact, business-like attitude regarding your child’s fear and distress. Let your behaviors reflect how you believe your child should respond to the situation. Act like it’s O.K., don’t get sucked into his distress and certainly do not help your child avoid feared situations. This does not mean that you must be a cold automaton-like parent. If you make adjustments to your behaviors and stick with them, even when your child initially escalates his or her distress in response to your behavior changes (this is known as an extinction burst, in behavioral terms) you will gradually see your child become less fearful.