This workshop is an opportunity to share experiences, insights, and understanding on the subject of childhood fears and how to overcome them.
It’s distressing for us as parents when our children are fearful, not only because we empathise with their feelings but we also have to deal with the fallout. Fear can turn a normally loving child into someone we don’t recognise. Crisis management is always the hardest part of parenting.
Fear is just one of the negative emotions which is part of everyone’s human experience. Fear can be protective as well as distressing. Times when we were very scared are often seared on our memories. I can well remember waking one night as a child and seeing the shadow of a burglar on the wall. I could see the silhouette of his cloth cap and the sack on his back. That’s how I knew it was a burglar. From my childish perspective flat cap and swag bag means burglar, and they come at night, and don’t make any sound. So it was all there! I was petrified and I can still see that silhouette.
In this workshop we’ll explore the landscape of fear – where it comes from, different types of fear and why it’s a natural and normal part of life that our children have to learn to overcome. Harnessed in the right way, fear can also be a protective emotion. We’ll also look at the importance of empathy in supporting our children when they are fearful, gaining insight into the difference between empathy and sympathy and how as adults we can help our children by balancing empathy with realism. Simply dismissing your child’s fears as ridiculous or ‘nothing to worry about’ will not help remove the fear, it just leaves the child feeling like no one understands or cares. However, as adults we are also able to help our children not to ‘wallow’ in unnecessary fears.
During the session we’ll start to look at the different ways in which fear is communicated, and manifested in our children, and how to adapt your communications to meet your child where they are in that moment, modelling good behaviour (e.g. not screaming at spiders!). Finally, we’ll dig into that moment of crisis management, when your child has gone beyond the rational and needs urgent, immediate intervention to get them back into a safe state.