Fearful Kids Can't Separate Fantasy from Reality

[Buster's Uncle]

Fearful Kids Can't Separate Fantasy from Reality
By Tanya Lewis, LiveScience Staff Writer | LiveScience.com – Sat, Feb 16, 2013.. .

 
Ghosts, monsters, the bogeyman — these are the nightly torments of small children everywhere.
 
The majority of youngsters experience some form of nighttime fears: fear of nighttime separation, fear of the dark or scary dreams. While most kids tend to outgrow these fears as they age, some children develop severe nighttime phobias. Kids who suffer these severe jitters at night have a harder time distinguishing fantasy from reality, a new study finds.
 
The study involved 80 children ages 4 to 6 who experienced severe nighttime fears (50 boys and 30 girls) compared with 32 normal children without such fears (18 boys and 14 girls). Researchers interviewed the children and their parents individually to gauge the kids' level of fear.
 
In the children's interviews, researchers read the kids a brief picture-book story that set the mood for kids to talk about their fears. The parents were asked about the content of their children's nighttime fears as well as how often and severe those fears were. [What Really Scares People: Top 10 Phobias]
 
Children were given the "Koala Fear Questionnaire," in which they had to rate their fear of scary pictures on a scale of Koala bears depicting different levels of fear. Parents were given another questionnaire asking them to rate their children's fear levels.
 
The kids were also shown images of real or mythical beings and situations and asked to decide whether the subjects were imaginary or could occur in real life. For example, for mythical figures like a fairy or Bob the Builder, the researchers might ask questions like: "Do you think this fairy can come to your home?" or "Do you think you could see this fairy in a movie or on TV?" The kids also were asked to distinguish between real and fantasy situations, such as "burglars breaking into the house," or "a monster frightening a child in the dark."
 
Kids who experienced nighttime fears had a harder time making fantasy-reality distinctions than the other kids, the study revealed. The findings suggest a developmental delay in nighttime fear sufferers, the researchers say. In addition, younger children had a harder time at the fantasy-reality task than older ones, showing that the ability improves with age.
 
Children who have more difficulty separating fact from fiction may be more prone to nighttime fears, the researchers propose. Alternatively, kids who have more nighttime fears might be more likely to confuse fantasy and reality.
 
The results of the study, which appeared in the February issue of the journal Child Psychiatry & Human Development, have important clinical implications for overcoming nighttime fears, the researchers say. For instance, therapists could work on the underlying problem of separating fact from fiction.

http://news.yahoo.com/fearful-kids-cant-separate-fantasy-reality-141243988.html

...I did have some luck calming my niece's fears by showing her how to make jack o'lanterns and such, explaining at length that they were pretend...

[Unorthodox]

Buster is afraid of pumpkins?  Did you use the nifty knife I sent? 

I, however, do not agree with this whole "real" and "Imaginary" approach.  Monsters DO exist, and they can come into the child's room and scare them.  It makes no difference whether it was in their heads or not. 

Yet if hope has flown away
In the night or in the day
In a vision or in none
Is it therefore the less gone?

(dream within a dream, from memory, it might be "in A night/day")

Bob the Builder and Tinkerbell are every bit as real as Santa Claus, and there would be few attempting to rid a 6 year old of that belief.   

This whole campaign to stamp out the imagination of kids really tends to piss me off.  "Oh, there's something wrong with you if you have nightmares".  Screw that.  Thankfully, I was taught lucid dreaming to deal with my problems. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Buster used to be afraid of pumpkins; I carved a jack o'lantern face into an apple while she watched, which cured her.  She was making her fear everyone's problem.  I've found that giving her a sense of power over thing that scare her does the trick, and hasn't hurt her imagination at all.

This was years ago, and I've told you about it before.

[Unorthodox]

I was criticizing the scientists suggesting that they needed to treat "the seperating of fact from fiction" rather than the fears themselves, not your actions, BU.