"I'm afraid of everything" How do I deal with this level of anxiety in 8 year old DS?

[LittleBella]

DS has always been a bit cautious and timid, but this is getting to a worrying level. It started off with unfounded fears about school - he might not be able to do the work, he might get told off, he might get into trouble, he might get hurt by another child in the playground. And now it's moved to every other area of life. Tonight when he went to bed, he was scared that there would be a fire, he was scared someone would come in and kill him, he was scared clothes etc. lying on chairs, desk etc., would make scary shapes to frighten him.

I really don't know how to reassure him. Any advice please?

Have you had any berevement in the family/friends recently.

After my cousin died when I was 8, my fears of dying/flying/heights/my parents dying etc got a lot worse and now, it's so bad I don't go on public transport in case I die and leave my kids without a mother.

I know that sounds rather over the top but that is the one single event I can put it down to.

If there hasn't been a death, perhaps he's just becoming more aware of dangers around him - look at how vivid the news is. My dd worries herself silly if she hears something harrowing in the news, although I try not to let her watch it.

I'm not a psych expert but my 8 year old has lots of fears too and I try a number of things.

I take a kind of behavioural/cognitive approach, combined with trying to get him to talk about stuff but he's reluctant to often. I suspect it is a phase many kids this age go through as they become more aware of how scary the world actually is but they're just little still so can't process it like adults do...

So...

I ask him to rate things in terms of how scary they are, 1 to 10. And how scared he is of them at that moment (probably best to pick the most scary at that point). Then I ask him to think about how likely the scary thing is to really happen (ie him to die, the shadows to actually be monsters, a fire... etc) Again he has to come up with a number... If he struggles with this, I give him a bit of info (fires EXTREMELY rare, we have smoke detectors, we have a family fire drill etc...; how many real monsters has he ACTUALLY seen, therefore how likely is it that one would enter his room... etc)

Going through it like this and giving it a number then allows you with him to reassess his fear after the rating/discussion. And just doing this in itself can help to reduce the fear AND give him some cognitive strategies to use on his own to deal with his fears.

You can reassure him a bit but I found this approach worked better than telling him nothing bad ever happens because it does, but you CAN tell him its very unlikely to happen because it is very rare in real life and he may be reassured by that...

Really helps my DS. HTH with yours.

sorry - should have said, at the end of the discussion, ask him 1 to 10 how scared he is now.... hopefully it will have dropped, even 1 point is an achievement. Keep working on the fear and hopefully it will go down further...

If you keep a record, then next time he's scared you can refer to his previous answers about thing he's scared of to remind him he does have some skills to help himself with...

That sounds like a good plan Monkeybird, thanks. Do you write it down?

little bella your DS sounds like mine

scared of his own shadow, scared of the dark, scared of going upstaris on his own, wont play upstairs on his own, wont go to bed on his own (he is 9 this week!!), wont walk into a room when the light is off.

Oh i have a list of things, we talk about all of them. I never make him do anything he doesnt want ot do.........except the going to bed thing. I was like this too as a child and I think you need to just bear with him, the discussion that MB talks about is good, help him rationalise it.

good luck

Not always but we have done when it's been really bad, best thing actually is for him to do it - keep a sort of diary of 'before' and 'after' the discussions, with the number ratings listed so he can see that they go down by talking about it.

OK am going to try that.