When Your Child... Is Scared of Spooky Things
Q: Ever since my daughter (age 9) accidentally saw a trailer for a scary movie, she’s been terrified of all things Halloween. She hates pumpkins, black cats, witches’ hats, and especially masks of any kind. Her friends are all looking forward to the school Halloween festival, which includes a haunted house. My daughter has had a bunch of teary melt-downs because she’s torn between her fear of the spooky stuff and her fear of missing out on fun with friends. Some of her friends are also encouraging/pressuring her to come, insisting that the festival is fun and the haunted house is not that scary. How can I help my daughter figure out what to do?
Some children love spooky things. Just like with roller coasters, they enjoy the thrill of danger in the context of safety. Other kids, often those with particularly vivid imaginations, are just plain scared by spooky things.
Your daughter seems stuck, pulled between two negative outcomes: either she has to be terrified or she has to separate herself from her friends.
Let’s try to peel away the layers of this problem to see if we can expand options beyond this painful either/or.
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Start with empathy
For parents, starting with empathy is always the right choice. Wrapping feelings up in words makes them more understandable and therefore more manageable. When you, as a parent, do this, it’s like you’re holding half the weight of her big feelings.
Just describe the feelings and reactions you see. You could say something like:
“You’re feeling scared of the Halloween festival and you’re also feeling sad about the idea of missing out on fun with your friends.”
“You’re mad that Amanda keeps encouraging you to come to the festival when you don’t want to!'“
“It’s hard for you to see Halloween stuff everywhere.”
“You wish you could cancel Halloween!”
We adults tend to want to skip the feelings and go straight to the solution. Kids won’t let us. When children don’t feel heard, they get louder. Keep empathizing until you see a softening in your child’s face or body, which tells you she feels heard. Then we can shift to problem-solving.
Friendship issues
I doubt the friend is trying to be mean by encouraging your daughter to attend the festival. See if your daughter can think of some non-mean reasons why the friend keeps asking her to come. Probably it truly isn’t scary for the friend. Maybe she’s trying to be supportive. She definitely likes doing things with your daughter. Seeing a friend with kind eyes is important for maintaining the friendship.
On the other hand, we want your daughter to be able to speak up for what she wants or needs. This would be a good thing to practice in role play, so your child feels confident doing it in real life. Stick with “I” statements rather than “You always/never” attacks.
I like the formula “I need you to [action] because [reason the action is important to me].” The world would be a better place if people could say this more often!
Your daughter might say to her friend:
“I need you to stop telling me to go to the festival because it makes me feel pressured.”
“I need you to give me time to figure out what I want to do because this is hard for me.”
“I need you to accept that this is scary for me, even though it’s not scary for you, because when you argue it feels like you’re not listening to me.”
If she’s definitely decided not to attend the school Halloween festival, it might be useful to practice ways of saying a clear no.
“No, thanks.”
“No, it’s just not my thing.”
“No, I don’t want to do that.”
“No, I’ve decided I’m not going to do that.”
“No, I’ve thought about it, but I’ve decided I don’t want to go.”
“No, I don’t want to do that, but I can…”
That last one might be particularly useful if your daughter wants to offer an alternative activity to connect with her friends either before or after the festival. (She should not expect her friends to skip the festival, just because she doesn’t like it.) She may have to say “no” several times, so her friends know she means it.
Also, try to lower the pressure on your daughter by emphasizing that her friendships are much bigger than this one Halloween festival. There will be many other opportunities to do fun things with her friends, whether or not she decides to go to the festival.
General Halloween fears
Our instinct as parents is to protect our children from feeling uncomfortable. But if we do this too much, it can restrict our children and prevent them from living their lives. Every time we protect them from something, we’re saying to our kids, “This is truly dangerous!” or “You can’t handle this!” Sometimes that’s true, but not always.
Doing hard things is how children develop competence and confidence. We don’t want to steal that opportunity from them, even though it’s uncomfortable for us as well as them.
Avoidance makes anxiety grow. The more kids avoid things, the scarier those things seem and the less confident they become that they can cope with them.
Your daughter’s fears have spread well beyond the original movie trailer. With fears, unfortunately, the only way out is through. The metaphor I use with my clients is you have to stay in the water to get used to it. A corollary to that is no amount of standing by the edge of the pool will help you get used to the water.
Help your daughter choose what she could do to put a toe in the water and get used to some of the milder Halloween items. We’re aiming for uncomfortable but doable. Then help her gradually build up her tolerance. This is called graduated exposure.
The specific tasks aren’t important. What matters is that she prove to herself that she can tolerate the discomfort of doing these things. Don’t move on to a scarier step until she’s comfortable with an easier step. She gets to decide what’s scary but tolerable. Here are some possibilities:
Carve a silly face on a small pumpkin.
Make a collage of Halloween decorations, where she cuts out and clues the pictures.
Let her choose a mask that’s a bit scary and leave it lying around your home.
Have her pat a scary mask once, twice, forty times. Do it again.
Play catch with a scary mask.
Have her hold a scary mask until she’s bored.
Take photos of her wearing a scary mask.
Have her take photos of you wearing a scary mask.
Address specific fears about the festival
Knowledge is power. I doubt the school festival is truly horrifying. The fear factor in the haunted house is probably mostly surprise and maybe grossness. Could you “ruin” the scariness for her by getting her a well-lit, behind-the-scenes look at what happens in the haunted house? Would it be possible for her to help with the haunted house in some way? Ramping up the predictability and control could lower her fear.
Would it be possible for her to see the setup of the rest of the festival before the event? Could she see photos of last year’s event? She might decide that she can tolerate doing some parts of the festival, such as the games or food, even if she’s not up to doing the haunted house.
Deal with the original fear
Many people live long and happy lives without watching scary movies. It is absolutely your daughter’s right to decide she doesn’t want to deal with those. But given that she’s already seen this trailer, it may be worth trying to drain the power of those particular images.
If you haven’t already, see if you can find the trailer online. Watch it yourself, so you know what’s in it, then talk with your daughter about it. “Ruin” the scariness by explaining to your daughter about actors and special effects and that no one gets hurt. It’s just pretending.
Then, if she’s willing, maybe play just the audio with your daughter at double speed, so the people sound like chipmunks. Talk about how the music adds to the emotion. Talk along with the voices in an overly dramatic way. Make up silly words to the song to emphasize that it’s not dangerous. Play the audio again and again, until she’s bored. Work up to playing the audio at a regular speed.
When she’s ready, you could play a part of the video without sound, with you narrating in a neutral way, “Now, the actor is going to come out with the rubber knife and the fake blood.” Play part or all of the video with no sound again and again until she doesn’t react to it. Work up to combining the audio and video, first at double speed, then at regular speed.
Your daughter may never like scary movies, but we could definitely drain the scariness of this particular trailer.
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