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    Joined: Feb 2016
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    fjzh Offline OP
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    Anyone have an elementary-aged kid with irrational fears? They seem to come and go in waves for my 7 year old daughter, but some have stuck around. I'm open to any and all suggestions beyond my "be compassionate but rational" with this.

    Examples: she's terrified of costumed characters (think Disney World) and mannequins (mostly just the kinds that have painted on facial features, she can survive a trip to a shopping mall). Sometimes she can tolerate their presence, other times she is literally so panicked that fight or flight kicks in and her brain chooses flight. I had to chase her once in a baseball stadium when the mascot was unexpectedly around the corner. She very logically knows it's just people inside fuzzy costumes, and just giant plastic dolls dressed up and painted, but it doesn't help at all in the moment.

    Lately she's also been afraid of every little noise in the house, which has resulted in a fear of certain areas of our home such as walking past where the furnace is to get to the family room, or she's afraid of the closed shower curtain in the bathroom so it has to stay open all the time, and even then the bathroom still freaks her out. She still goes to these places, but calls out to me a lot, or runs by with her eyes closed.

    I don't know what to do to help her. She's leery of and often refuses to go to parades and amusement parks and carnivals (costumed characters), museums and antique shops (mannequins), and that has to be miserable for her to feel on edge like that or know she's missing out. Any advice?

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    KJP Offline
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    DS8 can be anxious. I got this workbook for him and he liked it.

    http://www.amazon.com/What-When-You-Worry-Much/dp/1591473144


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    My DD had the EXACT same fears, at about the same age!

    She grew out of those anxieties, FWIW, but she does have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and counseling has helped a lot with that. She is much more receptive than DS to counseling interventions--she actually wanted to go, probably because she likes to talk and always feels like nobody listens to her.

    She gets spooked very easily and I have been able to use this as leverage in terms of what movies she watches, etc. She wants to be "scared" but she takes forever to detox, even from silly Girl Scout ghost stories.

    I also have the workbook KJP references, and it's a good psycho-
    educational tool.

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    fjzh Offline OP
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    eco21268, how old was she when she outgrew it? Tell me it was by 7.5, haha smile Did her counseling address these specific fears or was it covering more the anxiety? My daughter is totally open to the idea of therapy, but it sort of feels like overkill for this, but then again if it could help...

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    Originally Posted by fjzh
    eco21268, how old was she when she outgrew it? Tell me it was by 7.5, haha smile Did her counseling address these specific fears or was it covering more the anxiety? My daughter is totally open to the idea of therapy, but it sort of feels like overkill for this, but then again if it could help...
    I can't actually remember! I think the phobic behaviors are kind of typical for younger kids with generalized anxiety--a concrete way of expressing it, you know?

    She is almost 12, now, and is still pretty anxiety-driven. I can't think of a single specific fear right off the bat, though I bet there are some.

    I used this CD with my DS who had really bad phobias, and it really seemed to help.

    http://www.amazon.com/Indigo-Dreams-Relaxation-Management-Children/dp/0970863349

    His fears were more abstract, though, and manifested in perseverative behavior at bedtime (which is when we used the CD).

    I think you can do your own CBT type interventions at home, but if your DD is open to counseling and it's affordable, some kids really love it. It helps them to have some language to label their feelings and some directly taught coping skills.

    I don't think it's over the top, if it's affecting anyone's QOL at home.

    (full disclosure: I am a therapist)

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    There is one thing I'd look for when thinking this through: do you think there's anything else going on that might be causing anxiety for your dd that's somewhat under the surface of the obvious?

    Two of my children had what seemed like irrational fears when they were your dd's age - and those fears turned out to be due to something else entirely unrelated to what they seemed to be related to. 2e ds worried terribly about people breaking into our house, and the worries got so bad he started being afraid of going outside to play in our yard. What was really going on was stress at school due to an undiagnosed 2nd e - but he was too young to understand what was so stressful about school, and his stress came out in what seemed like irrational anxiety. Once he had a diagnosis and help with is 2nd e, the fear of robbers and the outdoors disappeared almost overnight.

    One of my dds was beyond scared of going into the movie theater or public places crowded with lots of people. She'd get so stressed she'd cry so and just couldn't go in. We found out at the end of 2nd grade she had severe double vision (we'd had no clue earlier - she never said anything about troubles with seeing two of everything). Her severe anxiety over going into a movie theater or crowded public place disappeared once her vision had been corrected. OTOH, she's still crazy scared of heights... which I suspect may be due to her vision (she still has very limited peripheral vision). And she's now insanely scared of spiders. So much so she's basically infamous for it at school. She's never been bitten by a spider and the spiders in our part of the world are truly very small - I can't think of any logical reason she would be scared of them - but scared out of her mind crazy by spiders, that's my dd. Totally irrational. Don't think it's an indication of anything else other than thinking spiders are freaky scary looking. Not to worry you, but my dd has now been crazy-scared of spiders for years... I've tried quite a few things to help her get over it... and I think now it's just her "something" that isn't going away.

    Which leads into the second thing I'll suggest thinking through: does your dd tend to have an anxious personality, or is she only anxious in these situations? Some people are just anxious by nature. My ds, for example, doesn't walk around constantly anxious but he reacts to stress with anxiety. So for the most part, as long as his world isn't filled with unnecessary stress, his anxiety isn't something that is such a huge issue he needs help with it - he just needs help sometimes dealing with stress in specific situations, and we can manage helping with that as parents.

    My younger dd, however, has an extremely anxious personality. She's never had what seem to be irrational fears, but she has a ton of worries. We've worked through the book KJP mentions and it was really helpful. She also saw a counselor for her anxiety briefly when she was younger (around 7) and that didn't work out to well. It helped a little, but didn't help long-term. Maturing hasn't helped the worries really go away, but it has helped dd learn how to manage them much better.

    And... the last thing I'll add... my dd with the vision issue - correcting the vision issue took care of the irrational fears - *the ones we could see*. She seems to be an incredibly happy-go-lucky kid on the outside who is always laughing, smiling, cheering everybody else up and onward. I didn't find out until she was a teen that deep down inside, she still had a lot of worries that she wasn't sharing with anyone. So, fwiw, there's something positive to be said for anxiety and irrational fears that you can *see* and know your child is experiencing. Those obvious and irrational fears may go away, but keep talking with your dd and try to keep in touch with what she's feeling as best you can.

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

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    pb makes some really good points--in our case DS phobias were(are) part and parcel of his second E.

    DD is more like the "anxious personality" and seems like she was born that way. There is actually a commonly studied gene variant associated with both higher levels of anxiety and some aspects of intelligence.
    https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs4680
    (We know DS has this variant, as do I, so DD is at least heterozygous. I know this isn't what you asked about, but it's really interesting to see that some of us are just made that way!)

    Here's an interesting article about the arachnophobia: http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/our-fear-spiders-innate-not-learned

    (I know that is more than a little OT but it's interesting to me that there are so many shared fears across cultures. I wonder how those costume characters relate? Maybe something about the size, exaggerated features?)

    And here is a really cool book that I like to use with bright/verbal children to encourage them they can shape their experience:

    http://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Ela...rect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

    No matter the anxiety triggers, developing some coping skills won't hurt anything.

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    aeh Offline
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    I've commented before that there is nothing wrong with anxiety in and of itself, as long as you manage your anxiety, instead of your anxiety driving you. It has valuable functions for individual survival and communal harmony. This is where CBT and related therapies come in: they provide individuals with tools for putting anxiety in its place.

    And to throw in another spin on the long-term perspective: one of my sibs has an anxious temperament, which I'm sure felt like an impediment in childhood. As an adult, however, this sib is in a professional field where clients typically are dealing with anxieties of their own, often regarding fears of a very tangible nature. My sib has channeled the anxious temperament into a professional asset, by telling clients, "you don't have to worry about this--I will." To which these clients in crisis generally respond well.


    ...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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    fjzh Offline OP
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    She's a "glass half empty" sort of kid. Don't get me wrong, she's happy most of the time, but when faced with something she definitely assumes the worst pretty much always.

    I'm not sure that she's particularly anxious beyond these specific fears. Though a fear of noises in the house means she is feeling anxious a lot of the time.

    I guess I'm not sure how to help her manage it. I model being calm but sympathetic when she's faced with the direct fears, I encourage her to still navigate our home by herself, but I feel like things are getting worse and not better.

    What sort of counseling would be recommended? Play based? Cognitive behavioral?

    Last edited by fjzh; 05/21/16 01:50 PM.
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    My oldest DS9is a very anxious kid and we have decided, just before the transition to middle school to have him see a psychologist who does CBT and has a good reputation for working with gifted kids. The trigger was DS as saying things like "I have so many problems I do not want to live any more" and I a afraid of hurting myself on purpose like touching a hot plate."
    CBT was recommended for us for a kid that was cognitively advanced. The therapist does use play, though, too. At this point, I have no idea what it is exactly they are doing and whether it is helping or he is is just in a good phase (he has crazy up and downs and we never really are able to tease things apart) but DS loves going and insurance covers it, so it's just the drive that is annoying, and we will keep going for a while.

    The first irrational fear he had, before he was two, was balloons, later expanded to any large round object like globes. Also very loud machines like hand dryers in public toilets, kitchen mixers, vacuums etc. Before he turned three, he started being afreiad of death. We have gone through to dogs, hippopotamuses (long story), natural disasters, irrational fears of what might happen if he can't find his science worksheet...there is always something new.

    A great tip I got from a another parent of a gifted child, similar to what aeh suggested a therapist might do, was saying, forcefully, that it was not his job to worry about most of this stuff but mine. As in, you are not even allowed to get married before you are 18, so you are not allowed to panic now at the age of four whether you are ever going to find a wife. Somehow, it helped.

    Last edited by Tigerle; 05/22/16 12:57 PM.
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