Childhood Fears

[poliphilo]

Fabi is terrified of the rabbits. He can't be in the same space as them. He can't even be in the room next to where they are.  He insists they bite- though I don't believe one has ever bitten him. Perhaps we warned him they bit when he was a toddler to stop him from poking them in the eyes. You never know with kids what damage a well-intended, thoughtless word will do.

Kids are unaccountable in their fears. I remember I was scared to the same pitch of hysteria by a cartoon cowboy- and ventriloquist's doll- called Hank. When the theme music started I had about three seconds to run from the room before his dead-eyed puppet face, with its big droopy moustaches, popped out of nowhere and filled the screen. Hank was supposed to be a lovable character

What do you do?  Yesterday we went and sat in the back yard and all the time he was yelling and screaming about rabbits.  I took him into the ginnel- away from the rabbit- and he kicked the football for a minute or two, but then the horrors returned.

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

When I was very small, I remember my parents leaving me with my grandmother, sitting in a lawn chair under a maple tree. I remember it all distinctly, They had not got far, when they stopped to move a box turtle out of the lane and, realizing I had yet to encounter one, returned to the house and set it on the ground in front of me. My father's last words, before leaving again, were, "Be careful! He could bite a finger off".

I don't know how long I sat there, staring at the damned thing, but I was terrified, afraid it might leap up at any moment and attack my fingers. Eventually, I got up the nerve to bolt screaming for the house. Don't think I was necessarily scarred for life, but the memory has not faded in nearly five decades.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Adults forget that children take their lightest word as gospel.

We have to be awfully careful what we say to them.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

The only thing you can do is keep them apart. Partly for Fabi, partly because if he's that scared of the rabbits and one corners him in a room, the rabbit is liable to get hurt if he panics.

I'm afraid I can't tell how old he is because I am useless with children, but if he's of school age and has some friends of his age you can invite over, if he sees everyone else interacting happily with the rabbits without incident, it may start to make him question his position. I mean: I don't think it will cure him, but just the process of questioning his own fear is a good start.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He'll be starting nursery later this year. He's a timid child. All sorts of things scare him- or so Odi says.

This thing with the rabbits has grown and grown. At first he was merely shy of them. Now there's only one room in our house he's happy to go in. Yesterday he was frightened of being in the kitchen, because there are glass doors and he knew there was a rabbit outside.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Does he get extra attention / comfort when he shows fear? I suspect the answer is to secure the rabbits somewhere they really, truly can't get to him, and then tell him he's safe (as long as he stays out of X) and just tell him he's safe when he wibbles and then immediately distract him with something else, instead of being particularly comforting.

I was phobic of everything as a child, after I was taken away from my mum. With hindsight it's easy to see why, but there isn't an easy answer, other than to ensure that the child knows they are safe, and then try not to reinforce it by making a fuss over him when he's being scared, I guess.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Good advice.

Yes, he does get more attention when he cuts up. I think it may well have something to do with having to compete with a baby sister. Next time he comes- provided we know he's coming (we didn't yesterday and were caught unprepared)- we will tidy the rabbits away first.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sounds as if it's an unconscious attention-getty thing, and definitely if he learns that being afraid is effective for refocusing the room on him, he'll sprout phobias all over the place. Hopefully you can nip it in the bud this way and give him happy attention instead!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I hope so. I guess I dealt with this sort of thing with my own kids, but it's getting to be a long time ago now- and I'm feeling rusty.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, I deal with this all the time with Henrijk (except he will use aggression to draw the focus back to himself, when he has jealousy issues with one of the others).

[oakmouse]

Remember that being small, he's closer to eye-level with the rabbits, and he can see those --- to a child --- huge scary teeth. A friend's little girl, who was about three or four at the time, developed a fear of rabbits because her mother allowed her to feed a carrot to a neighbor's perfectly friendly, kid-safe rabbit and in the process the poor little tyke saw THE TEETH. She recoiled screaming, and refused to get near the rabbit again on the grounds that it might bite her really really badly because it had such nasty vicious teeth.

(I wonder if Monty Python got the vorpal bunny from a childhood fright.)

The good news is that she outgrew the fear. By the time she was about six or so her older brother acquired pet rabbits of his own, and she got used to them fairly quickly once she realized they really weren't that bad. I suspect Fabi can get over it too, with patience and help.

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

A child who's scared of bunnies!?! Wow! That's really something.