Worried about my son

[Mandy03]

Hi everyone
My ds will be turning 4 very soon. He's a bit of a contradiction, in that he is quite extrovert and boisterous on one hand & will chat quite openly to anybody, but on the other he seems to feel a lot of fear about particular things. We had a particular episode at a theme park last weekend which had dh and I wondering if ds' reactions were normal. Firstly we are also having trouble getting him to sit on the toilet. He stands up to wee in it, but refuses to sit on it and just says he's scared. He will literally scream and cry if we make him sit on it, and will only do it in the potty. We've tried EVERYTHING, but nothing seems to alleviate his fears.

Anyway on Sunday we took him to a theme park and there were all sorts of rides there, including a rides section for younger children - most of these he loved, and went on them several times. The problem came when we tried to take him on a ride that went through a series of rooms and then ended up as a boat ride through dimly-lit canals. The problem started with the extremely loud noises and voices coming over the loudspeaker, and then when we tried to take him on the boat ride (VERY tame mind you) he freaked out - screaming, crying, shouting "I want to get out of here!" etc etc. Out of all the children on the ride, ds was the only one who was disturbed by it. All the rest of them seemed to be taking it in their stride. In the end we had to be let out by a staff member so that ds wouldn't have to go on the ride. To top it all off, dh got angry with ds and said to me "There's something seriously wrong with this child" (for being scared). He said it right in front of ds and I wasn't happy at all, in fact dh and I ended up in an argument about it. DS seems fine in every other way, socially and behaviourally, but he seems to have some very deep-seated fears. It really concerns me and i'm wondering if there are other children who are similar, or whether I need to have it looked in to.

I'm afraid I can't offer any pearls of wisdom on this one, but wanted to send hugs and BUMP you

Do not worry over this sounds normal to me.
The toilet thing will come let him do it in his own time- just re-assure him. My nephew was the same now 7 and is fine.
It's not unsual for children to be frightened of something- he is only 4 still very young. The noise thing can be sometimes scary and maybe a new experience. larsxx

My DS, just 4, is also afraid of loud noises especially fireworks although he will happily watch them on TV, just freaks out if we go to a display...so we don't anymore! My nephew was the same at his age so I would say that your dh is wrong, there is nothing wrong with being afraid of noise - think how many kids are afraid of thunder!
Regarding the toilet thing, my ds will currently only sit down if he can face the toilet (ie back-to-front) because he says otherwise he thinks he will fall in! Maybe you could try that with ds.

Mandy, a child I looked after at that age was similiarly terrified of sitting on the toilet - and it makes sense if you look at it from their point of view: to them a toilet sized hole is a bit of a chasm, big enough for them to fel as if they are falling in, flushing is quite a 'whoosh', and they don't have a concept of where it goes, it just 'disappears' things for ever in a whoosh.
Also, loud noises over a speaker, when the child can't see the source of the noise, sounds quite frightening to me! I think your dh may have been reacting from embarrassment at the fuss rather than in sympathy with your child!

Blu you're probably right about the toilet thing, I just thought that at 4 yrs old he would be comfortable with it by now. I'd probably be more relaxed about it except that certain people I know (including my mother) tut-tut about the fact that he's not able to sit on the toilet yet, and one friend told me that I should give him no choice in the matter. I am not going to force him as I think he needs encouragement more than anything at the moment, since he's obviously afraid of it, but I do wonder how long it's going to take to get over this.

I think I felt concerned about ds' reaction because of the obvious intensity of his fear. He was really scared and wouldn't listen to anything we said, he just went into a panic. He gets lots of love & affection but I suppose deep down I'm wondering what the source of the fear is, and I'm hoping it's fairly normal for kids to feel this way sometimes when they're young. It just disturbed me that the other children didn't seem to be bothered by it & it made me feel that he was somehow 'different' by reacting to it the way he did.

This sounds very normal to me, Mandy03. Our ds, 3.5y, is very similar (though not an extrovert). He dislikes loud noises, and will hold his hands over his ears even if he just thinks htat there may be a sudden or loud noise, for example waiting for the toaster to pop the toast up. He isn't afraid of the toilet but did go through a phase where he didn't like to sit on it. Until he started to ask for the flush I never flushed while he was still in the room. I carried a folding toilet seat around with me for about 6m. He started using the adult seat by himself a long time ago, but still occasionally gets the small seat down to use it.

The way we deal with ds's anxieties oover sound, are simply not to force him. If we have no choice but to be around the sound, then we explain it, and let him hold on to us (or his ears). We don't take him to the cinema because it distresses him.

It can be frustrating, but I'm sure it will pass. TBH, I can absolutely understand your dh's reaction - even though I don't agree with it.

I think maybe our ds's are oversensitive to sound - not just the volume, but maybe they get a sort of information overload and feel overwhelmed. Certainly when we have tried to persuade ds to accept the noise and behave 'normally' he has also become hysterical.

No advice really but just reassurance that it's quite normal! My ds, now 12, sounds just like yours, fearless and confident in some areas, nervous in others. I think it tends to be fear of the unknown (ie the ride) whereas if they are in control, they are fine. For instance, my ds is a great skateboarder and attempts things older boys won't but last year was frightened of various rides at Disney- not even the scary ones!
I know it's hard not to compare your child to others, but just think, there were probably lots of 4 year olds who had point blank refused to get in the queue at all. FWIW I think you were right to challenge your dh a bout what he said- the last thing you want is to make this into an 'issue' with your ds.

That's interesting prettycandles, about your ds getting more hysterical when you try to calm him down. We found exactly the same thing - I don't know why it is. Maybe the more you try to appease them, the more they think something is wrong.

It's completely normal. My stepdaughter is happy & socially confident but does have quite a sensible, cautious nature and is terrified by fireworks. She cried because there were 4th July fireworks in the little French village we stayed in last year. And she was 11.

BTW, I really wouldn't bother 'psychoanalysing' the cause of the fear - it rarely helps IMO. Alsod I don't think it is always a good idea to say, "don't be frightened. It's OK" etc, because they ARE frightened, so it isn't OK. Personally I think it is better just to take them away from the thing that is frightening them asap, maybe say something like, "Oh dear you seem a bit frightened. Let's not do that anymore" and then distract with a pleasant activity or an icecream or something. I think by going on about the frightening event or thing you actually make the fear worse. A bit like someone saying to me, if I was panicking about a tube train being stuck in a tunnel (my phobia) "Don't panic, it's only stuck in a tunnel. There's nothing to be scared about." Because to me, it is , and I need someone to distract me with stupid jokes!

I think it's very significant that your son's fears are "reasonable" - a toilet is genuinely big enough for a 3 yr old to slip into when sitting on (my dd has a few times, luckily she thinks it's funny) and as for that boat ride, it sounds like it was MEANT to be spooky. Does he have any "strange" fears - say, of pictures in books that seem to you perfectly innocent, or particular TV ads, or things that he is at the same time fascinated (even fixated) by? Those sorts of fears would I think merit more investigation. Also, actually, lack of fear of things he "ought" to be scared of (fast cars, strangers, you know the sort of thing) would worry me.

Also, how does he calm down from a fear incident? Can you settle him? Does he carry around a vivid memory of the incident for a long time, or is he completely back to normal as soon as the trigger is gone? Can you talk to him about the scary thing (ie, in its absence) or does the very mention of it scare him?

My son can be panicky. Toilets definitely used to be one of the things, now well over that; triggers have also been swimming pool filters, overhanging balconies, the fact that we might miss a train; and snails(!). I did quite a bit of reading about childhood anxiety and the pointers above come from that - result of which I decided not to worry about his worries, though I do make sure I help him through any that come up, and our experience is that they do pass (he's 5). If you like I'll try to recall what I read?

Until I was about 9 I used to walk really slowly into our toilet because I was scared that I would trip and fall down it headfirst and get stuck.....and I'm completely normal...ha ha hee hee...

Mandy a friend of mine has a DS (almost 5) who is similarly scared by dark places. He's very bright tho (best talker I ever knew at 2) and TBH I think he's just too imaginative - which is a good thing, surely (in terms of intelligence etc I mean)? I honestly wouldn't worry about your DS, havent we all been in that "why is my child the only one upset/misbehaving/crying/not having fun?" situation?

Binkie he does seem quite 'fearless' when it comes to other things, but I think that's because he doesn't fully understand the dangers involved yet. Eg. he's quite open with strangers and will wander away from me quite often when we're out, even though I've been trying to discourage it for ages. A few days ago I ran around the supermarket looking for him after he disappeared, and I found him chatting to a mother and child at the other end of the store. I also took him to a doctors' appointment last week and while I was paying the bill, he ran out the front door and I found him several minutes later sitting next to a man on a bench outside, chatting away to him. So I would say that 'stranger danger' could be a problem at the moment, he seems to trust most people implicitly even though I've been talking to him about it a lot recently.

He's always been especially frightened of loud noises or strange sounds if he doesn't know where they're coming from, although surprisingly thunder doesn't bother him. Certain things on tv have frightened him a bit before too (kid's tv), but he usually either puts his hands over his eyes for a moment or asks me to forward the tape through the part he doesn't like, but he doesn't seem to get upset over it. After the incident at the theme park, it probably took maybe 5-10 minutes to calm him down after we took him away from the ride, and then he seemed to be ok. He has mentioned a couple of times since then that he didn't like the ride, but as far as I know he hasn't had any bad dreams about it or anything. I really can't think of any 'strange' fears he has, except for a couple of innocent looking toys he didn't like when he was much younger.

I would be interested to know a bit more about it if you can think of anything else, Binkie - thanks.

Mandy, I will try and remember what I looked at. Might take me a few days, hope that's OK.

Your son's fears definitely don't sound worse than my son's, and in a way quite similar - he has to watch AngelMouse (of all things) from behind the sofa, but otherwise triggers are understandable - inc. loudspeakers for him too when younger. He has only once had a panic attack whose intensity frightened me - when he was 4 - over suddenly noticing in local mall that there were some high balconies jutting out over the atrium - he was shrieking and shaking with fright and begging to get out. But once we'd gone, he was completely fine; we talked to him a bit now and again about how buildings are made, which he was happy with - ie, it didn't restart the panic; and now although he's not especially keen on overhanging things (and again, I think that's perfectly understandable) we've never had another panic like that.

Recommended tactics seem to vary, in particular between confronting the fear and distracting from it. Nightmares I do distract from - never ask what it was about, just cuddle & get them to agree that "when you wake up the dream just goes POP like a bubble", but I do use (oblique) confronting tactics for waking fears. What works for us, but all children are different, so ignore if of no help - are:

• fulsome praise about conquered fears ("you used to be scared of snails, didn't you, and now you're not! That's brilliant!" );

• sneaking references to current triggers into unrelated chats ("look there's someone trying to catch a bus, oh dear they didn't manage, but it doesn't really matter if people miss things, there's always another isn't there" ); and

• relevant factual books - spent a while on books about buildings before I felt he was fully over the balconies thing.

Mandy - have to say, it all sounds completely normal for a 4 year old to have what we, as adults, might consider irrational fears.
my DS1 is now 4.5 and is in so many ways a complete extrovert - confident, bubbly and seemingly fearless (happily went up on stage at a pantomime in front of 700 people and sang and dnaced on his own) and yet, at the moment, if there is an ant or a worm so much as within 2 feet of him he is reduced into a screaming, out of control fit. Any amount of reassurance just seems to make it worse.

no real advice - other than really try to stay calm for him - keep reassuring, and if possible, remove the cause of the problem. Perhaps later have a 'chat' about what's happened and try to get to the route of his fear (in a conversational way). For us, we tried to interest him in 'bugs' in general/ talked about them/ read books etc. Perhaps you could talk to him about how rides like those in theme parks are set up - how they might work behind the scenes??