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Joined: Feb 2016
Posts: 63
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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.
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Joined: Aug 2010
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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. 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.
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Joined: Feb 2016
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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.
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Joined: May 2016
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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!
Last edited by HJA; 05/24/16 10:56 AM.
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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? 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.
Last edited by stemfun; 05/24/16 11:38 AM. Reason: clarity
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Joined: Feb 2016
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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!
Last edited by fjzh; 05/24/16 06:28 PM.
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Joined: Jan 2012
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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.
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Joined: Aug 2013
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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.
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Joined: Feb 2016
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chay, what ages, and have they outgrown it? I like hearing success stories! 
Last edited by fjzh; 05/24/16 06:22 PM.
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Joined: Aug 2013
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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!
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