DD terrified of spiders. What can I do?

[SpiderSleep]

DD is 4 and has recently developed a fear of spiders, but only some of the time. If she finds a spider somewhere, she is hysterical screaming and crying. If she thinks there might be a spider somewhere, she won’t go into that place eg an entire room. We went to the park recently and there were spiders in the toilet. I literally had to carry her screaming in because she needed the loo, but wouldn’t go in because of them. It’s a new phobia and I have no idea what to do about it. If I find a spider, I’ll hold it and show her, and she will often ask to hold it herself. No issues there, she asks and isn’t forced or pressured at all, she asks. But if she discovers them, all hell breaks loose. Last night she woke up crying because she was worried there might be spiders in her room. I let her share a bed with me because I was exhausted and didn’t want her waking everyone up. But I don’t want this to become a habit?
has anyone had this with their child? There was no trigger and it’s random whether she likes them or is hysterically afraid. She can’t explain it either when I’ve asked her. Most importantly, what can I do to help her? We live rurally. There are spiders everywhere!

Having once woken up to find a spider on my face, I feel surprise spiders are actually a fairly reasonable thing to be afraid of.

I wonder if there's an element of fear of the dark, or of corners mixed in? I remember being that age quite vividly, and I had a fairly loose grip of reality, especially at night - nothing looked as in the day, walls would move, and corners could hide monsters, or anything.

Children don't just develop these irrational fears from nowhere. My niece was like this about flies. Oddly every time a fly came inside my mum would frantically chase it around the house flapping her tea towell at it to shoo it out the window. I wonder where my niece got her reaction from?

The question is how are you behaving around spiders in front of her because she's obviously picked this up from someone else.

We had a neighbour who you could actively see had got a neurosis around dogs from her mum and was passing it on to her own kids. If her mum saw even a well behaved dog that was ignoring her, she practically threw herself under the traffic to get across the road, if she saw a dog she'd push the pram straight into the road in front of cars to get away, what are the children learning from that behaviour from the adults in their lives? To react neurotically at the sight of a dog.

Whenever a child unable to rationalize develops a fear like this, first look at how grownups are behaving around them.

If you google jumping spider videos to show her that might help. They are very very cute and have cured peoples arachnophobia. Also holding tarantulas and seeing how chill they are.

It may not be from you directly but I bet you £100 she's seen SOMEONE adult scream and react badly at the sight of a spider and learned a reaction.

She may be too young but I was utterly terrified and had hypnotherapy, it worked a treat.

Case in point 😍

Might sound silly but when DS was young he was terrified of them so I used to ask him to help me name them and we made up daft stories about them doing mundane things like going to the supermarket .
He’s still not a fan but can cope with them and at 14 he still remembers “Sharon” who lived behind the wing mirror of my car and shopped at Asda

@Hoppinggreen we name spiders too! Both kids were scared (DS is scared of all insects too) Now the kids fight over who names spider first. We have lots of Bob's, little Bob's and Colin's.

Read 'Charlotte's Web' to her.

We name them. We calmy talk about them when there isnt any. We worked out a plan with youngest dc (who is scared) if youngest dc finds one, rather than screaming they come and get me or sibling and we evict them.

I also talk calmly and joke - oh that's just Harry leave him alone he is just chilling. Took a while but worked in the end.

I was terrified up until fairly recently tbh.

Are you sure there hasn’t been a trigger? I didn’t click the pieces together until adulthood but around 4 there were two incidents which created the fear, one being I got a fright when I was standing in the bath because I saw a spider (just a small fright because I wasn’t expecting it) and fell and knocked my head. Around the same time I was locked inside a cupboard by some mean boys and there was a spider in there. Boom, fear of spiders!

Anyway I got a fairly real looking plastic spider and started placing it around the house, and asking DH to hide it. It would give me a big fright initially but as time went on it didn’t affect me. I used to start crying and jump up on furniture when I saw a spider. Now I’m able to calmly ask a family member to remove it, so I still don’t like them, and I will still freak out a bit if they get too close, but it’s manageable, and if they’re up and out of the way I leave them to it. But could you maybe try something similar and turn it into a game?

I think the other suggestions of naming them etc is a great idea too!

Thanks for the advice, I like the idea of trying to name them, she loves naming her dolls etc!
there’s honestly been nothing that I can think of. Her room has a nightlight but she’s not afraid of the dark and walks to the toilet and my room without turning lights on. We’ve not had an influx of spiders or a giant one, or anything changing. I’m not keen on spiders, but I don’t run screaming or react in fear. I’ve even bought a spider hoover so we can suck them up and she can see them before I put them in the garden