The Community for Catholic Moms

Childhood Fears

Hi there,

My 7 year old. soon to be 8 year old has developed a fear of sharks that has spread to a fear of water, or anything with sharp teeth i.e. Dinosaurs. At first we didn't address it, because it was not interfering with our everyday activities and we knew it was highly unlikely he'd ever be around a shark.

When his class covered sea creatures in science, it posed a problem for him and his classmates soon discovered his fear, which led to him being the brunt of some teasing. Recently it has become more of a problem for us as a family because he will not watch anything, as far as a movie, TV show, or even a commercial that involves water. Family movie nights have become a battle zone. We can easily resort to doing other things together as a family, much to our older son's dissappointment.

We try to be an active family especially in the summer, which involves activities near water, swimming, fishing, boating, etc., He wants nothing to do with any of these and will cry and shake with fear if we even attempt to force him.

HELP! How do you handle your children's fears? Do you have any suggestions for us? We've talked about how he should turn to prayer, calling on Christ and the saints, especially St. Michael. We've talked about the importance of conquering our fears and growing in the virtue of courage. I am not sure any of this is helping him.

I look forward to your suggestions.

God Bless and thank you in advance

Tags: Children, Fears

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer O'Gorman Flippen on October 17, 2010 at 12:45am

Great advice, Kristen. Also, another possibility is to contact The Institute for the Psychological Sciences. They are a Catholic graduate psychology program located in Arlington, Virginia. This is just a back up plan. They may know of a therapist that isn't part of the link Kristen gave. God bless.

http://ipsciences.edu/pages/ips-clinic.php

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Permalink Reply by Tima on October 18, 2010 at 1:38pm

You are all very helpful. I appreciate all your feedback. We have a friend who is a Catholic Psychologist and she is helping us out. Little by little we are getting a handle on things, all in the spirit of helping him and helping us to be the parents he needs us to be. With God's grace we'll sort this out. IPS is awesome...we've met with Art Bennett last summer (2009) when we visited the centre...we'd like to have an Alpha Omega Centre in Canada some day, God willing.

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Permalink Reply by Jennifer O'Gorman Flippen on October 18, 2010 at 6:17pm

Great - I actually took a few courses there when it first opened up - no degree though. God bless you. Remember that your child is in God's loving Hands and that you are leading him to Him. That is what is most important. All these issues can serve to deepen his character. Make lemonade out of a lemon with prayers. :)

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Permalink Reply by Katherine Marie on November 1, 2010 at 6:28pm

Hello- I'm new to the site, but wanted to comment on this. I have OCD and it was diagnosed young... maybe 5th grade. My fears started out with small things. Ironically, I distinctly remember being deathly afraid that if I went on a boat on Lake Superior as a small child (probably younger than 3rd grade- don't remember), a shark would get me. I remember sobbing and walking around in Duluth with my whole family mad at me because we couldn't go (due to my fear). The fear evolved into things with the 1st Gulf war, then fears of death, then ghosts, then aliens, and even as I got older, fears of relationships and scrupulosity.... I don't want to scare you or self diagnose your child. It sounds like you have a great resource in the Catholic Psychologist. I just wanted to share that for me it's an anxiety disorder, and I'm still learning to cope because the coping skills learned 20 years ago scared me into "normalcy" but never really treated it. I'm having to learn that now.
I pray that you find the answers and can help you child develop coping skills to live a full life! And even more, I hope it's just a weird phase and nothing like OCD. But I wanted to share, in case my experience could be helpful. :) God bless!