“Dad, I’m scared, Can you stay with me until I fall asleep?”. Many families have heard these types of phrases when we were planning to go sit and rest on the couch and watch an episode of our favorite series.
We talk about nocturnal fears when children express their anxiety in the face of some threat while awake, either at the time of going to bed or during the night. Although they may be associated, they are different from other phenomena such as night terrors, which involve sudden and disturbed awakenings in the middle of the night, and nightmares.
There are no clear figures on the number of children who suffer from night fears, but from some studies we could estimate that around 70% of children and adolescents between 4 and 16 years old They may experience fears occasionally, and around 10% may have them recurrently. While At younger ages, fears are usually associated more with the fantastic or supernatural. (monsters, ghosts), From 9-10 years old they are more linked to personal safety (for example, robbery or kidnapping).
Because?
The causes of these fears are very diverse. In addition to evolutionary and physiological factors, others also intervene, such as parenting patterns and social practices regarding sleep, as well as anxiety levels or the child’s temperament.
How to prevent night fears?
To deal with episodes of night fear, it is best to start by preventing them. In this sense, we can follow some general guidelines in three aspects.
Sleep hygiene. First of all, we have the usual recommendations to achieve good sleep hygiene. Anything that helps you fall asleep more easily and reduces the possibility of waking up in the middle of the night will reduce the moments in which you may feel afraid. It is beneficial to have a family routine before children go to bed, with quiet activities such as reading, singing or telling stories, reducing the use of technologies such as tablets and television. In addition, practicing physical activity outdoors during the day, avoiding a sedentary lifestyle, will promote the need for rest. Secondly, you must make a stimulus and environmental control. You should avoid having objects in the bedroom that may appear to be threatening figures in the dark (for example, a coat rack) and, although it may seem obvious, avoid exposure to content that generates fear or adult content, especially in the hours before going to school. sleep. Finally, general strategies of Emotional education. After all, fear is also an emotion that we must learn to regulate. Helping to understand emotions, naming them, expressing them and talking openly about feelings will help our children transmit to us how they feel. The fact that they express those fears to us is preferable to them not feeling confident to talk about it, or us ignoring or denying how they feel.
How to act when they are afraid?
The first big dilemma faced when faced with nighttime fears is deciding where children should sleep. Doing it with adults offers a very effective short-term solution to reduce those fears. However, in the medium and long term it may not be so beneficial, since they may end up associating the space of their room with fear, and feel that they are not able to sleep if they are not accompanied.
So, if you want your children to be able to sleep in independent rooms, we must try to make them calm down in their own room. Therefore, except on specific occasions, it is better to accompany them to their room, and try to calm them down there, instead of taking them to another room. The goal is for them to feel that their room is a safe place.
As we saw before, night fears must be faced as another situation in which it is necessary to regulate oneself emotionally. At first, we will have to give a lot of support to calm them down and explain to them how they can achieve it, to progressively make them take responsibility for it and over time do it autonomously. The following are three examples of general strategies to regulate fear that we can teach them:
Distraction: pay attention and think about elements that do not cause fear and that we may find pleasant, or even use humor.
Re-evaluation: think about the situation that produces the emotion in a different way to change its meaning. In the case of fears of fantastic objects, a reaffirmation of reality can be done, ensuring that these creatures, although they exist in the imagination, are not real nor are they going to come to attack us.
Reflection about emotion: explain what fear is and why we usually feel it. To do this, stories and anecdotes can be used.
Ultimately, the best way to deal with fears is to maintain open communication, facilitate the expression of feelings and emotions, and be good models of emotional regulation. Additionally, you must have good sleeping habits. In the event that fear excessively harms the child’s rest and well-being, personalized psychological treatment should be requested.
Daniel García Pérez, Professor of Evolutionary and Educational Psychology, Complutense University of Madrid
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original.
This content was originally published in RED/ACCION and is republished as part of the “Human Journalism” program, an alliance for quality journalism between RÍO NEGRO and RED/ACCION.