Parenting Secrets with Dr. Michele Borba : Blogs at iVillage.com
- Pregnancy & Parenting
- Parenting Secrets
Q&A: Helping Kids Overcome Fears
Each week Michele Borba answers your parenting questions right here
on her blog. If you have a parenting problem or question leave a
comment on this post and you may have yours answered next week!
My son is PETRIFIED of the swimming pool. He is 9 and had a bad experience before (nothing major, he choked on some water) and now refuses to go anywhere near the pool. I don't want him to miss out on any summer fun, but I think making him take swimming lessons might be too hard for me. Help!
I agree. I hate to have a child avoid learning to swim because it’s going to really hinder his social life. But pushing the swimming lessons onto a kid with such a strong fear can be hard. You can help him work through his fear of water with a psychological principle called “Conditioning.” It’s easy and will save you hundreds of dollars for counseling.
You expose a child to the fear in small gradual doses that he can handle until the fear is reduced. The trick is that the child has to work through the fear at his own pace. Pushing too much too soon can backfire. So you watch your child’s reaction carefully to make sure you’re not pushing your child too quickly and you’re also slowly increasing the fear so he can cope.
Suppose your child is scared to death of big dogs. You start by letting him play with a sweetest, gentlest puppy the size of a hamster and when he feels secure you increase the size of the dog until he can finally stand up to the neighbor’s German shepherd.
Use the same principle with water. You start by helping the child feel more secure around water by just having fun on a slip and slide with the sprinkler. When his confidence grows you move to a wading pool or a creek that comes to his ankles, and finally advance to the shallow end of a swimming pool. Try the swimming lessons only after your child experiences success in shallower water or you’ll be wasting your money. Even then find one very patient teacher who your child can trust, and then set realistic expectations. Your goal by August is to get him to feel secure in the shallow end of a pool. Next summer your goal is for him to swim in the deep end. And if the process goes faster just take yourself to the spa.
First keep in mind that the fear is very real to the child so never belittle. At the same time don’t overprotect him from facing his fear. Sometimes it helps to teach your child a fear-reducing statement he can say inside his head to counter the fear, “I can do this.” Or “This isn’t as hard as I thought.”
Click here to read more of Michele Borba's Q&As, or leave a comment below with your own questions and it may be answered next week.
Dr. Michele Borba is the author of Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essentail Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing.
My son is PETRIFIED of the swimming pool. He is 9 and had a bad experience before (nothing major, he choked on some water) and now refuses to go anywhere near the pool. I don't want him to miss out on any summer fun, but I think making him take swimming lessons might be too hard for me. Help!
I agree. I hate to have a child avoid learning to swim because it’s going to really hinder his social life. But pushing the swimming lessons onto a kid with such a strong fear can be hard. You can help him work through his fear of water with a psychological principle called “Conditioning.” It’s easy and will save you hundreds of dollars for counseling.You expose a child to the fear in small gradual doses that he can handle until the fear is reduced. The trick is that the child has to work through the fear at his own pace. Pushing too much too soon can backfire. So you watch your child’s reaction carefully to make sure you’re not pushing your child too quickly and you’re also slowly increasing the fear so he can cope.
Suppose your child is scared to death of big dogs. You start by letting him play with a sweetest, gentlest puppy the size of a hamster and when he feels secure you increase the size of the dog until he can finally stand up to the neighbor’s German shepherd.
Use the same principle with water. You start by helping the child feel more secure around water by just having fun on a slip and slide with the sprinkler. When his confidence grows you move to a wading pool or a creek that comes to his ankles, and finally advance to the shallow end of a swimming pool. Try the swimming lessons only after your child experiences success in shallower water or you’ll be wasting your money. Even then find one very patient teacher who your child can trust, and then set realistic expectations. Your goal by August is to get him to feel secure in the shallow end of a pool. Next summer your goal is for him to swim in the deep end. And if the process goes faster just take yourself to the spa.
First keep in mind that the fear is very real to the child so never belittle. At the same time don’t overprotect him from facing his fear. Sometimes it helps to teach your child a fear-reducing statement he can say inside his head to counter the fear, “I can do this.” Or “This isn’t as hard as I thought.”
Click here to read more of Michele Borba's Q&As, or leave a comment below with your own questions and it may be answered next week.
Dr. Michele Borba is the author of Building Moral Intelligence: The Seven Essentail Virtues That Teach Kids to Do the Right Thing.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Q&A: Helping Kids Overcome Fears.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://micheleborba.ivillage.com/system/mt-tb.cgi/6767
My daughter is studing in a very competitive school in Asia. How do I help her to stay calm during examination? She knows her stuff, but she makes very careless mistakes, which I belive are resulted from being nervous.
My almost 4 yr old daughter has a major meltdown just about EVERY time we ride in the car. As soon as she is buckled in her carseat she starts whining "I'm not comfortable" and begins writhing around. When we ask her what or where specifically she's uncomfortable, she repeats "I'm just not comfortable". Then as the car ride ensues her whining and writhing escalates into a full-blown screaming, crying, kicking and writhing episode which results in the removal of shoes and socks, completely disheveled hair that's sweat-soaked, and smeared with tears and nasal discharge. We 've tried: being empathetic and reassuring to her, firmly telling her to stop and setting consequences (time-outs) once we reach our destination, and just plain ignoring her - all to no avail. She usually will cry until she is all worn out and falls asleep. We've also tried pulling the car over, removing her from the carseat and waiting for her to calm down enough to resume the car-ride, which is extremely unfair to her 5yo sister and 17 mos old brother.
She has disliked car-rides since infancy and used to scream, cry, and pull out her hair as a baby, and as a toddler she'd struggle with the carseat straps and yell "stuck, stuck!". She has had periods of time where she seemed to have outgrown these car-related fits, but they've recently returned with a vengeance. We're pretty sure she just doesn't like the feeling of being strapped in and that there aren't other underlying issues going on, but we're pretty much at our wits end and don't know how we should be handling these daily meltdowns. Please HELP!!!!!!!!!!!