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

[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.