Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Anxious kid, irrational fears

Thank you for sharing your experience, Tigerle. We have a few providers very local to us, but I need to look into what insurance might cover.

I also agree with this. I rather wish someone had told me earlier that similar behaviors on the part of my DD were a sign of broader issues with anxiety. She's cycled through various fears and worries over time.

Thanks for your input, too, ultramarina. Have you found therapy to be helpful for your daughter? I'd love for mine to have some tools to cope instead of being anxious about these things. I'd love to hear about personal experiences with kids in therapy for fears/anxiety.

Our DS5 had some troubling anxiety this time last year when he fell and scraped his hand in our garden. The resulting scratch was very minimal but he was unable to cope with it. He wouldn't open his hand for several days and wouldn't even let us open it to clean it. We took him to a psychologist for the first time several weeks afterwards. He only went for a couple of sessions but I think it was somewhat helpful. The psychologist talked to him about the relationship between thinking, feeling and body (i.e. when you are scared of something, you feel sick to your stomach, you think the thing that is scaring you might kill you and your body reacts with an elevated heartbeat and shaky hands). He also taught him about "thinking traps" such as the "worst case" trap or the "magnify bad" trap and when to recognize when he has fallen into a trap.

As far as effectiveness is concerned, we haven't had any more injuries to deal with, but we think he is better at dealing with minor scrapes and bloody noses etc. We have continued to talk to him about "thinking traps" with respect to other things, though, like his fear of skating (because the ice is too slippery, which means that he will fall and then be unable to get up) and his fear of slides etc.

We also had the psychologist talk to him a little bit about perfectionism as well although that wasn't really the focus. The psychologist told him that everyone makes mistakes etc.

To be perfectly honest with you, I don't think the psychologist said anything that we hadn't already kind of said to our son but I do think it helped to have it spelled out in a very practical way. I also think it really helped to have someone other than parents talking to him about stuff like this.

Good luck!

One of my DS was afraid of the costumed characters at Disney land when he was 7 or 8 years old, I can't remember which. He laughs at that now. He was also afraid of balloons when he was a year old, now (at 10) he complains about shadows in his room at night but luckily that doesn't stop him from falling asleep.

Thanks, HJA, I definitely feel like hearing it from someone that's not a parent will help her. She's incredible responsive to that in other situations.

stemfun, was he tolerant of the costumed characters though afraid, or would he literally freak and run away? I'm dealing with the latter right now, and I'd really love to plan a Disney trip in a year or two!

He was literally freaked out by the characters and wanted to leave the restaurant we were in right away, it was one of those "Disney character" dinners that you had to make arrangements for in advance. I had made arrangements for Disney character dining for both dinner and breakfast. We decided to skip the breakfast experience after we'd seen how terrified he was at dinner, it was supposed to be a fun experience after all

I think you should go ahead and visit if you would like to, but be prepared to slow things down a bit or change your plans if things don't go as expected.

We survived Disney with two kids who were freaked out by costumes/mascots/etc. The characters are almost always surrounded by lots of people so we just kept our heads up and avoided them. Most of the time the kids didn't even see them because of their height and the crowds.

chay, what ages, and have they outgrown it? I like hearing success stories!

We've been there twice (we have family there). The first time they were 4 & 2. The second time they were 9 and almost 7. My oldest was the one that was most freaked out by them and he is mostly ok now. He will still not choose to go anywhere close to them or interact with them (a wave or eye contact) but he no longer freaks out when they walk down the stadium steps when we're 10 seats in from the stairs like he used to. My youngest kind of follows his lead so now that he's better, she is as well.

Good luck!