The child is afraid that his mother will die. Children's question: if a child is afraid of death. Dreams under the umbrella of Ole Lukoje

Hello. You need to talk to your child, but talk correctly. If your “explanations” end in hysterics, it means that you are doing (saying) something not quite right. Perhaps you are being disingenuous in some way, perhaps you are trying to make the problem less significant or brush it aside altogether. Both tactics are wrong. When did your child first start asking you questions about death? About the mortality of all living things? Usually this happens somewhat earlier than at the age of six, and if he receives reasonable and reliable answers from his parents, then, by the age of six, as a rule, such questions are no longer asked. Therefore, I will assume that your child has been living with this unspoken fear for some time.
You need to talk about death with your child honestly - yes, everyone grows old and dies. When explaining the phenomenon of death, you can use religious concepts (for example, about the transmigration of souls or about life in paradise) - whatever is closer to you. When talking about mortality, focus on life - yes, we will all die, but it will not be soon - we have a long life to live, interesting life. Yes, when our loved ones die, we become very sad, but they always remain in our memory (looking at us from the sky, etc.) Yes, the child will cry, perhaps, but this state cannot be brought to the point of hysteria and scandal - let me he needs to cry about it. The conversation should be conducted in a calm tone.
After such a frank conversation, the child will most likely ask this question again and again. Many times. As many times as he needs. Be prepared for this. Just calmly repeat the same thing to him and let him cry if he wants to. You can’t brush off this conversation - I’ve already explained everything to you. He needs to be sure that you are telling the truth.
Discuss this issue with all loved ones to whom the child can turn, tell them what and how to say. All adults should say the same thing, there should be no contradictions.

In your case, the fear of death was added to the fear of your own growing up. And the fear of growing up is not necessarily associated with the death of loved ones. The second aspect is important here - how do you feel about your child’s growing up, does he see positive aspects in growing up, and not just growing responsibility? In what context do you use the word “adult” in relation to a child? And do you use it at all? Is he allowed to be a child at six years old? Thus, so that the child does not worry, it is better for you to contact child psychologist in person or online to analyze in detail what is happening and build an adequate model of interaction with the child on these issues.

All the best.

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Who among us was not surprised by these first children's “why?”, this curiosity, this desire of children to get to the bottom of things. “Why does the wind blow?”, “Why is the grass green and the sun round?”, “Why are the leaves on the trees green in summer and yellow in autumn?”, “Why did the frog eat the mosquito?”, “Where do children come from?”

Moreover, many “why?” easily turn into “why?” “Why does the wind blow?”, “Why do the leaves turn yellow?”, “Why does grandma have wrinkles?”, “Why does she get old?”

The child’s thinking leads to the fact that he tries to find some obvious or hidden meaning in everything. Hence these endless “why?” and why?".

​​​​​​​At first they surprise and delight with their naivety. Then they start to tire you: will you always have the patience to explain everything? Especially when difficult questions arise. They begin to irritate with their endless persistence. What seems self-evident to us suddenly requires explanation in the mouth of a child. But we find it difficult, we ourselves are not ready for these questions. And that’s why we get irritated. Much of what seemed obvious to us turns out to be not so obvious, but requires explanation. Simple answers are not so simple.

Mom, are all people dying?

We will die too.

It is not true. Tell me you're kidding.

He cried so energetically and pitifully that his mother, frightened, began to insist that she was joking.

A child awakens our thoughts, and awakening is not always pleasant, because it deprives us of many illusions. The child himself will not immediately understand that it would be better not to ask many questions. It would be more peaceful to live. Why? Because there are no answers to them.

Why does grandma have wrinkles?

Because she's old.

And when she gets young, she won't have wrinkles?

Grandma used to be young, but now she’s old. And he won't be young again.

Because all people are first young and then old.

And then?

And then they die.

Why do they die?

Here's a dead end for you. How to answer such a question?

Will you and daddy be old too?

I don't want you to be old.

Because I don't want you to die.

Well, it won't be soon, don't think about it.

I want you to always be with me - there are tears in my eyes.

We will always be with you. - I would like to console the child: it is difficult to resist the temptation to instill an illusion, at least temporarily.

And one late evening a piercing scream is heard from the children's room. In fear you rush to help:

What happened, Anya, what’s wrong with you?

Scary.

What are you afraid of?

I don't want to be old. - But it won’t be soon, don’t think about it.

So I will grow, grow... I will go to senior group... Then I’ll go to school... Then I’ll go to college... Then I’ll work... Then I’ll grow old and die! But I don’t want, I don’t want to die!

Don't be afraid, daughter, everything will be fine, you will live for a long, long time.

And then?..

A mother's tender hands and kisses are the most convincing arguments, the most reliable consolation.

When I grow up, I will become a doctor and come up with a cure for old age. And grandma will be young again, and I will be young.

Okay, Anechka, calm down.

How old is Anya? - Four years. How did these ideas about the finitude of existence penetrate into her consciousness and where did this passionate need to stop time come from? It is difficult to imagine at this age a sense of the fluidity of time. Most likely, the reason is different. In the feeling of one’s existence, in one’s sense of self. And the fear of non-existence. Fear of death at the age of three to five is a symptom of awakening self-awareness. The very sense of self becomes a need. And the fear of not feeling yourself easily turns into the fear of death. It is no coincidence, apparently, that children do not like to go to bed, and therefore they have to be persuaded to go "bye-bye." And the most convincing arguments are arguments like: “tomorrow will be a day again.” Anya, when she was 3 years old, often began to cry in the evening, seeing the darkened sky, twilight, and screamed and screamed: “I don’t want to sleep! Won’t you put me to sleep?” And I fell asleep for 2-3 hours with tears.

When falling asleep, the child loses his sense of self, and this is so similar to death, albeit temporary. Therefore, it is likely that attacks of fear of death occur before bedtime. The events of the day fade from consciousness, the world plunges into darkness. There remains a weak light of self-awareness, the whole world, my whole “I” are in it. Now it will go out, and I will go out. Tomorrow is beyond the horizon of consciousness. It ceases to be reality. There is only one reality left - the feeling of oneself. It is about to disappear. And I will disappear... This is probably what happens when people die... It’s scary... Mom!!

Fear of non-existence is what a 3-5 year old child is primarily afraid of. But what does non-existence mean for a child at this time? Associated with this are other fears that often visit a child at this age. Most often it is a fear of darkness, loneliness, and closed space.

How does fear of the dark manifest itself? The life of a child is the life of his “I”. And the less full it is, the less it is, the closer it is to disappearance, to death. He sees a house, trees, a car, a mother... This very vision constitutes the content of his “I”. And suddenly... Darkness... He doesn’t see, he doesn’t feel, his self-awareness has narrowed, almost empty. In this darkness, darkness, you can dissolve, disappear, disappear without a trace. From there, threatening images can always suddenly appear. From darkness, as from emptiness, fantasies are born more easily. Why not death?

What about loneliness? How can you not be afraid of him?! “I” is not just “I”, it is a whole world of what I see and hear. “I” is my mother, father, brother or sister, friends, grandmother, just acquaintances. What if they don't exist? My self-awareness is narrowing again, reduced to a small bird of my “I”, which is about to be lost in this huge empty world, ready to swallow me. As we see, again the threat of non-existence.

Alas, how much we do not know about the child! He loves to play, of course. But how often does he play against his will? “Go and play,” we tell him, wanting to get rid of his annoying communication, wanting to take a break from him. And he goes and plays, escaping from evil boredom, hiding from the terrifying emptiness. The child becomes attached to a doll, a hamster, toys, because he still has nothing else. As the famous Polish teacher and doctor Janusz Korczak correctly noted, “the prisoner and the old man become attached to the same thing, because they have nothing.”

There is so much we don’t hear in a child’s soul. We hear how the girl teaches the doll the rules of good manners, how she scares her and scolds her; and we don’t hear how he complains to her in bed about those around him, whispers to her about worries, failures, dreams:

What can I tell you, doll! But do not tell anyone.

You are a good dog, I’m not angry with you, you didn’t do anything bad to me.

This loneliness of a child gives the doll a soul. The life of a child is not paradise, but drama.

Now about the fear of closed spaces. Its psychological impact is similar to the effect of fear of darkness and loneliness. It is no coincidence that all three fears usually appear together, and one gives rise to the other. An unanswered cry for help, crying, despair, and horror engulf the child, becoming a strong emotional shock.

At 6 years old, boys and girls may be afraid of scary dreams and death in their sleep. Moreover, the very fact of awareness of death as an irreparable misfortune, the cessation of life, often occurs in a dream: “I was walking in the zoo, I approached a lion’s cage, and the cage was open, the lion rushed at me and ate me.” A five-year-old boy, waking up in fear, rushes to his father and, clinging to him, sobbing, says: “I was swallowed by a crocodile...”. And, of course, the omnipresent Baba Yaga, who continues to chase children in their dreams, catch them and throw them into the oven.

At the age of 5-8 years, as noted by psychotherapist A.I. Zakharov, the fear of death often becomes more generalized. This is associated with the development of abstract thinking, awareness of the categories of time and space. The fear of a closed space is associated with the inability to leave it, overcome it, or get out of it. The feelings of hopelessness and despair that appear in this case are motivated by an instinctively acute fear of being buried alive, i.e. fear of death.

At the age of 5-8, children are especially sensitive to the threat of illness, misfortune, and death. Questions are already arising like: “Where did everything come from?”, “Why do people live?” At the age of 7-8 years, according to A.I. Zakharov, the maximum number of fears of death in children is noted. Why?

Often it is during these years that children begin to realize that human life is not endless: their grandmother, grandfather, or one of their adult friends dies. One way or another, the child feels that death is inevitable.

Fear of death presupposes a certain maturity of feelings, their depth, and is therefore expressed in emotionally sensitive and impressionable children prone to abstract thinking. It’s scary to “be nothing,” i.e. not to live, not to exist, not to feel, to be dead. With a dramatically sharpened fear of death, the child feels completely defenseless. He can sadly blame his mother: “Why did you give birth to me, I still have to die.”

Of course, the fear of death does not manifest itself in a dramatic form in all children. As a rule, children cope with such experiences on their own. But only if there is a cheerful atmosphere in the family, if the parents do not talk endlessly about illnesses, about the fact that someone has died and that misfortune can also happen to him (the child).

There is no need to be afraid of a child’s questions about death, there is no need to react painfully to them. His interest in this topic, in most cases, is purely cognitive (where does everything come from and where does it disappear?). Veresaev recorded, for example, the following conversation:

You know, mom, I think people are always the same: they live, they live, then they die. They will be buried in the ground. And then they will be born again.

What nonsense are you saying, Glebochka? Think about how this could be? They will bury a big man, but a small one will be born.

Well! It's all the same as peas! That's how big it is. Even taller than me. And then they plant it in the ground - it will begin to grow and become big again.

Or another educational question on the same topic. Three-year-old Natasha does not play or jump. The face expresses painful thought.

Natasha, what are you thinking about?

Who will bury the last person?

A business, practical question: who will bury the dead man when the funeral attendants are in the grave?

Information received about death often does not apply to oneself. As soon as a child is convinced of the inevitability of death for everything that exists, he rushes to immediately assure himself that he himself will be immortal forever. On the bus, a round-eyed boy of about four and a half years old looks at the funeral procession and says with pleasure:

Everyone will die, but I will remain.

Or another conversation, this time between mother and daughter.

Mom,” says four-year-old Anka, “all people die.” So someone will have to put the vase (urn) of the last person in its place. Let it be me, okay?

The reversibility of death may be allowed: “Grandma, will you die and then come to life again?” Or...

Grandmother died. They'll bury her now, but three-year-old Nina doesn't give in to much sadness:

Nothing! She will move from this hole to another, lie down and lie down and get better!

But it’s not far from curiosity to fear. Here is how, for example, K. Chukovsky describes the approximate evolution of ideas about death among his great-granddaughter Mashenka Kostyukova:

“First - a girl, then - an aunt, then - a grandmother, and then - a girl again. Here I had to explain that very old grandparents die, they are buried in the ground.

After which she politely asked the old woman:

Why haven’t you been buried in the land yet?

At the same time, a fear of death arose (at three and a half years):

I will not die! I don't want to lie in a coffin!

Mom, you won’t die, I’ll be bored without you! (And tears.)

However, by the age of four I came to terms with this too.”

Like other childhood fears, over time, with the right attitude from adults, the fear of death passes or becomes dull.

Years, events, people... But dramatic curiosity returns again and again, changing its form and intensity.

What is this, why, why?

The child often does not dare to ask. Feels small, lonely and helpless before the struggle of mysterious forces. Sensitive, like a smart dog, he looks around and looks into himself. Adults know something, hide something. They themselves are not what they pretend to be, and they demand from him that he is not what he really is.

Adults have their own lives, and adults get angry when children want to look into it; They want the child to be gullible, and they are happy if a naive question reveals that they do not understand.

Who am I in this world and why?

“When Signor Pea climbed onto the platform, he was seized with horror. Only then, on the steps of the scaffold, did he clearly imagine for the first time that he was about to die. So small, so plump, so green, with a cleanly washed head and trimmed nails, he still must die!" (J. Rodari “The Adventures of Cipollino”).

Children aged 8-11 years are characterized by a decrease in egocentrism. And this, in turn, dulls the fear of death, at least its instinctive forms. At this age, especially after 12 years, the social conditioning of the fear of death increases.

The fear of death is often embodied in the fear of “not being the one” who is spoken well of, loved, and respected. Life is no longer understood simply as seeing, hearing, communicating, but as living in accordance with certain social norms. And failure to comply with these standards, non-compliance with the requirements can be perceived by the child, figuratively speaking, as “the death of a good boy.” The need for self-preservation is no longer recognized only as a need for self-awareness, but as a need to “be good.” And for a child, sometimes being a “bad boy” is already the death of a “good boy.” Which death is more terrible? The death of me as an individual or the death of the “good boy” in me?

Specific manifestations of the fear of “being the wrong person” are fears of not being on time, being late, doing the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, being punished, etc.

Magical images of death also hover over the child. This is due to the common tendency of children of this age to the so-called magical imagination. They often believe in a “fatal” coincidence of circumstances, “mysterious” phenomena. This is the age when stories about vampires, ghosts, the Black Hand and the Queen of Spades seem fascinating.

The black hand for fearful children is the omnipresent and penetrating hand of the dead man. The Queen of Spades is an insensitive, cruel, cunning and insidious person, capable of casting witchcraft spells, turning into anything or making someone helpless and lifeless. To a greater extent, her image personifies everything that is in one way or another connected with the fatal outcome of events, fate, fate, and predictions. However, the Queen of Spades can directly play the role of the ghost of death, which is already noted in children of 6 years of age, mainly in girls.

So, one six-year-old girl, after a children's sanatorium, where she heard all sorts of stories before going to bed, was panicky afraid of the Queen of Spades. As a result, the girl avoided the dark, slept with her mother, did not let her go and constantly asked: “Won’t I die? Will nothing happen to me?”

At the age of 8-11, the Queen of Spades can play the role of a kind of vampire, sucking blood from people and taking their lives. Here is a fairy tale written by a 10-year-old girl: “There lived three brothers. They were homeless and somehow went into a house where a portrait of the Queen of Spades hung over the beds. The brothers ate and went to bed. At night, the Queen of Spades came out of the portrait. She went into the room first brother and drank his blood. Then she did the same with the second and third brother. When the brothers woke up, all three had a sore throat under their chins. “Should we go to the doctor?” asked the older brother. But the younger one suggested they go for a walk. When they returned from a walk, the rooms were black and bloody. They went to bed again, and at night the same thing happened. Then in the morning the brothers decided to go to the doctor. On the way, two brothers died. The younger brother came to the clinic, but it turned out to be a day off. "At night, the younger brother did not sleep and noticed the Queen of Spades emerging from the portrait. He grabbed a knife and killed her!" Children's fear of the Queen of Spades echoes their defenselessness in the face of an imaginary mortal danger.

As a rule, with age the child ceases to experience fear. New impressions and school worries give him the opportunity to escape from his fears and forget them. A child grows, and the fear of death, like other fears, changes its character, its coloring. A teenager is already a socially oriented person. He wants to be among his own kind. And this can turn into a fear of being rejected, an outcast. For many teenagers this is intolerable. True, this problem does not exist among children who are overly withdrawn and, as a result, uncommunicative, as well as among some teenagers who are oriented only towards themselves. But this is not typical.

Great in adolescence the need to be oneself, “to be oneself among others.” It gives rise to the desire for self-improvement. But this is sometimes inseparable from anxiety, anxiety, fear of not being yourself, i.e. someone else, at best - impersonal, at worst - having lost self-control, power over his feelings and reason. In this kind of fear one can easily recognize the familiar echoes of the fear of death. The fear of death also sounds in the fear of misfortune, trouble, or something irreparable.

Girls, who have more such social fears than boys, are more sensitive in the sphere of interpersonal relationships. In general, fears of death are more likely to manifest themselves in emotionally sensitive, impressionable adolescents. Of course, for most teenagers the problem is not so acute, and therefore there is no reason for excessive dramatization. But nevertheless, when pathologically acute, the fear of death can seriously undermine the life-affirming power of the individual and the creative potential of development. Therefore, you should not brush aside such fears in a child. They should not be allowed to grow excessively, since in adolescence they can turn into stable personality traits that undermine activity and self-confidence.

Time passes and difficult questions arise again. Now in my youth. "Who am I and why am I in this world?" The need for life self-determination, accompanied by many “why?”, “what for?” and “why?” has a very definite psychological basis.

Fluidity of time. How often do we notice it? And when do we notice? The first sensations of moving time arise precisely in youth, when you suddenly begin to understand its irreversibility.

In this regard, the problem of death often becomes aggravated again. The comprehension of eternity, infinity begins. And at the same time, sometimes there is fear of them. It is based on an emerging concept of life. There is a feeling of fluidity and irreversibility of time. Personal time is experienced as something living, concrete. The young man is faced with the problem of the finitude of his existence. This is where I live. Life is filled with different events: books, entertainment, school, dancing, dates... But they go away. Other events take their place. But they also leave. They leave forever. It's not that scary yet. Your whole life is ahead!.. But here it is mentally scrolling on the edge of consciousness and subconscious, flashing before your inner gaze in a matter of moments. So, what is next? Nothing. Emptiness. And you will never appear in this life again, you will disappear forever, like a grain of sand in the cosmos of the universe: you appeared, flew by and sank into oblivion.

There are attempts to philosophize on the topic of death. Personal life seems to be an immeasurably small grain of sand in the vast ocean of the cosmos of universal life. And the fact that this grain of sand can get lost in this general flow becomes scary. It’s scary that my life will end, the world will continue to live. For a very long time... maybe forever... But I will never return to this world. Never ever!!! Scary...

The egocentrism of the emerging and therefore immature self-awareness rebels. Rebels against the feeling of a grain of sand. And he searches and searches for a way out... But he doesn’t find it... The world returns to consciousness again and again in the image of the starry sky, black, black starry space. And in this space you fly into infinity, bad infinity, into emptiness.

No, outside this space ordinary, everyday life flows with its own affairs and worries, joys and sorrows. And this is especially offensive. But you are already forever doomed to this black, endlessly empty space. And there’s a knock in my temple: “Never, never! Why? Why is the world so unfair?! I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to die. I want the light of life, not the darkness of death. I want to live!” Tears flow down your cheeks from powerlessness and despair. And the fact that this will not happen soon is not reassuring. The image is timeless, philosophical. And it’s not reality that scares, but the thought itself, the image, the principle. For emotions, for fear there is no difference - it is not so important. And there is only one thing left: to survive, to wait, to be distracted, although this is not easy. Or just fall asleep... Although the thought, the image does not let go, it constantly returns and returns, like obsessions. And, like a masochist, you mentally chew over and over again, painfully experience...

And you imagine, imagine that one day, closing your eyes, you will never open them again and see the sun, that nothing will happen to you, that this dear Earth will spin and spin for centuries, and you will feel what is happening nothing more than a simple lump of earth, that this short, flickering, bittersweet life is my only fleeting glimpse of existence, the only touch to it in the endless ocean of endless time... You feel it like some kind of black gloomy witchcraft.

In adolescence, one way or another, images of immortality arise. It is difficult to come to terms with the fact that you will one day leave this life forever into oblivion, and therefore the fantasy that then, after some time, you will reappear, perhaps as another child, is easily instilled in your mind. Naive? Yes. But if you really don’t want to die, you can believe it.

Parting with the idea of ​​personal immortality is difficult and painful. And therefore the belief in physical immortality does not disappear immediately. The desperation and deadly actions of a teenager are not just a demonstration and test of one’s strength and courage, but in the literal sense of the word, a game with death, a test of fate with the absolute confidence that everything will work out, that one will get away with it.

“One of the features of youth is the conviction that you are immortal, and not in some unreal, abstract sense, but literally: you will never die!” The validity of this thought of Yu. Olesha is confirmed by many diaries and memoirs. “No! This is not true: I don’t believe that I will die young, I don’t believe that I should die at all - I feel incredibly eternal,” says the 18-year-old hero of Francois Mauriac.

In most cases, the question is not posed so dramatically. But this very experience of the fluidity of time and the awareness of the finitude of one’s existence is apparently universal. And it has its own meaning. If you appeared in this life and leave it irrevocably, why were you born? Why were you given this life? This immortal has nowhere to rush. He will still have time in this life: to study, to work, and to have fun. Only a person who has realized the finitude of his existence begins to think about its meaning and begins to search for his place in this life.

It is not easy to imagine your life, the time perspective of life as a whole, as insight, in a single act of contemplation. And not everyone comes to this thought right away in their youth. But... There are young men, and there are many of them, who do not want to think about the future, postponing all difficult questions and important decisions for “later.” They are trying to prolong the era of fun and carefreeness. Youth is a wonderful, amazing age that adults remember with tenderness and sadness. But everything is good in due time. Eternal youth is eternal spring, eternal flowering, but also eternal infertility.

The “eternal youth” is not at all lucky. Much more often, this is a person who failed to solve the problem of self-determination in time and take root in creative activity. His variability and impetuosity may seem attractive against the backdrop of the everyday mundaneness and everyday life of many of his peers, but this is not so much freedom as restlessness. One can sympathize with him rather than envy him. The need for immortality gives rise to the need for self-determination. The question about the meaning of life is posed globally in early youth, and a universal answer, suitable for everyone, is expected. “So many questions and problems torment and worry me,” writes sixteen-year-old Lena. “What am I needed for? Why was I born? Why do I live? From early childhood, the answer to these questions was clear to me: to benefit others. But now I I think, what does it mean to “be useful”? “By shining for others, I burn myself.” This, of course, is the answer. The goal of a person is to “shine for others.” He gives his life to work, love, friendship. People need a person, he It’s not for nothing that he walks the earth.” The girl does not notice that in her reasoning she is essentially not moving forward: the principle of “shine for others” is as abstract as the desire to “be useful.” But the emergence of questions, as the famous Soviet psychologist S.L. Rubinstein emphasized, is the first sign of the beginning work of thought and emerging understanding.

Other questions also come. A typical one is: “Who should I be?” Dreams about the future and professional intentions reflect, first of all, the need to be significant as a concrete manifestation of the need for immortality. Professional plans in early youth are often vague dreams that are in no way correlated with practical activities. These plans are focused more on the social prestige of the profession than on one's own individuality. Hence the characteristic inflated level of aspirations, the need to see oneself as outstanding and great.

“Every person,” writes I.S. Turgenev, “in his youth experienced an era of “genius,” enthusiastic self-confidence, friendly gatherings and circles... He is ready to talk about society, about social issues, about science; but society is also like science, exists for him - not he for them. Such an era of theories that are not conditioned by reality, and therefore do not want to be applied, dreamy and vague impulses, an excess of forces that are going to overthrow mountains, but for now do not want or cannot move and a straw, - such an era is necessarily repeated in the development of everyone; but only that one of us truly deserves the name of a person who is able to get out of this magic circle and go further, forward, towards his goal."

The young man does not immediately and simply come to the need to think about the means to achieve his goal. His youthful penchant for philosophizing prevents him from turning his attention to everyday affairs, which should bring the realization of his dreams closer. However, the idea that the future will “come by itself” is the attitude of the consumer, not the creator.

Until a young man finds himself in practical activity, it may seem small and insignificant to him and be identified with everyday routine. Hegel also noted this contradiction: “Until now, occupied only with general subjects and working only for himself, the young man, now turning into a husband, must, entering practical life, become active for others and take care of small things. And although this is completely in the order of things, - for if it is necessary to act, then it is inevitable to move on to particulars - however, for a person, the beginning of dealing with these particulars can still be very painful, and the impossibility of directly realizing his ideals can plunge him into hypochondria. This hypochondria - no matter how insignificant Many people had it - hardly anyone managed to escape. The later it takes hold of a person, the more severe its symptoms are. In weak natures, it can last a lifetime. In this painful state, a person does not want to give up his subjectivity, cannot overcome his aversion to reality, which can easily turn into actual inability."

The desire for immortality encourages action. And in this sense, the fear of death, moderately expressed and not reaching pathological sharpness, plays a positive role in adolescence.

There is a fear of death, both of parents (86.6%) and of one’s own (83.3%). Moreover, the fear of death is more common among girls than among boys (64% and 36%, respectively). A small number of children (6.6%) experience fear before falling asleep and fear of big streets. Mostly girls experience this fear. In 6-year-old girls, fears of the first group (fears of blood, injections, pain, war, attack, water, doctors, heights, illnesses, fires, animals) are also most clearly represented compared to boys of the same age. Of the fears of the second group, girls are most likely to be afraid of loneliness and darkness, and of the fears of the third group - fear of parents, being late for school, and punishment. In boys, compared to girls, the following fears are more pronounced: fear of depth (50%), some people (46.7%), fire (42.9%), closed space (40%). In general, girls are much more cowardly than boys, but this is hardly genetically determined: for the most part this is a consequence of the fact that girls are allowed to be afraid and their mothers fully support girls in their fears.

6-year-old children have already developed an understanding that in addition to good, kind and sympathetic parents, there are also bad ones. The bad ones are not only those who treat the child unfairly, but also those who quarrel and cannot find agreement among themselves. We find reflection in the typical age-related fears of devils as violators of social rules and established foundations, and at the same time as representatives of the other world. Obedient children who have experienced the age-specific feeling of guilt when violating rules and regulations in relation to authority figures that are significant to them are more susceptible to the fear of devils.

At the age of 5, transient obsessive repetitions of “indecent” words are characteristic; at the age of 6, children are overcome by anxiety and doubts about their future: “What if I won’t be beautiful?”, “What if no one will marry me?”, in a 7-year-old, there is suspiciousness: “Won’t we be late?”, “Are we going?”, “Will you buy it?”

Age-related manifestations of obsession, anxiety and suspiciousness themselves go away in children if parents are cheerful, calm, self-confident, and also if they take into account the individual and gender characteristics of their child.

Punishment for inappropriate language should be avoided by patiently explaining its inappropriateness and at the same time providing additional opportunities to relieve nervous tension in the game. Establishing friendly relations with children of the opposite sex also helps, and this cannot be done without the help of parents.

Children's anxious expectations are dispelled by calm analysis, authoritative explanation and persuasion. With regard to suspiciousness, the best thing is not to reinforce it, to switch the child’s attention, to run with him, to play, to cause physical fatigue, and to constantly express firm confidence in the certainty of the events taking place.

Divorce of parents in older children school age has a greater adverse effect on boys than on girls. The lack of influence of the father in the family or his absence can most complicate in boys the formation of gender-appropriate communication skills with peers, cause self-doubt, a feeling of powerlessness and doom in the face of, albeit imaginary, danger that fills the consciousness.

So, a 6-year-old boy from a single-parent family (his father left after a divorce) was terrified of the Serpent Gorynych. “He breathes - that’s all,” - this is how he explained his fear. By "everything" he meant death. No one knows when the Serpent Gorynych may arrive, rising from the depths of his subconscious, but it is clear that he can suddenly capture the imagination of a boy defenseless in front of him and paralyze his will to resist.

The presence of a constant imaginary threat indicates a lack of psychological defense, not formed due to the lack of adequate influence from the father. The boy does not have a defender who could kill the Serpent Gorynych, and from whom he could take an example, like the fabulous Ilya of Muromets.

Or let us cite the case of a 5-year-old boy who was afraid of “everything in the world”, was helpless and at the same time declared: “I am like a man.” He owed his infantility to his anxious and overprotective mother, who wanted to have a girl and did not take into account his desire for independence in the first years of his life. The boy was drawn to his father and strived to be like him in everything. But the father was removed from upbringing by an overbearing mother, who blocked all his attempts to exert any influence on her son.

The impossibility of identifying with the role of a squeezed and unauthoritative father in the presence of a restless and overprotective mother - this is what family situation, contributing to the destruction of activity and self-confidence in boys.

One day we noticed a confused, shy and timid 7-year-old boy who could not draw a whole family, despite our request. He drew either himself or his father separately, not realizing that both his mother and his father should be in the picture. elder sister. He also could not choose the role of father or mother in the game and become himself in it. The impossibility of identification with the father and his low authority were caused by the fact that the father constantly came home drunk and immediately went to bed. He was one of the men who “lived behind the closet” - inconspicuous, quiet, disconnected from family problems and not involved in raising children.

The boy could not be himself, since his domineering mother, having suffered defeat with his father leaving her influence, tried to take revenge in the fight for her son, who, according to her, was in every way like her despised husband and was just as harmful , lazy, stubborn. It must be said that the son was unwanted, and this constantly affected the mother’s attitude towards him, who was strict towards the emotionally sensitive boy, endlessly reprimanding and punishing him. In addition, she overprotected her son, kept him under constant control and stopped any manifestations of independence.

It is not surprising that he soon became “harmful” in his mother’s mind, because he was trying to somehow express himself, and to her this reminded her of his father’s previous activity. This is precisely what frightened the mother, who does not tolerate any disagreement, seeking to impose her will and subjugate everyone. She's like The Snow Queen, sat on the throne of principles, commanding, pointing, emotionally unavailable and cold, not understanding the spiritual needs of her son and treating him like a servant. The husband started drinking at one time as a sign of protest, defending himself from his wife with “alcoholic non-existence.”

In a conversation with the boy, we discovered not only age-related fears, but also many fears coming from previous age, including punishment from the mother, darkness, loneliness and confined space. The fear of loneliness was most pronounced, and this is understandable. He has no friend or protector in his family; he is an emotional orphan with living parents.

Unjustified severity, cruelty of the father in relations with children, physical punishment, ignoring spiritual needs and self-esteem also lead to fears.

As we have seen, forced or conscious substitution of the male role in the family by a mother who is domineering in nature not only does not contribute to the development of self-confidence in boys, but also leads to the emergence of lack of independence, dependence, and helplessness, which are fertile ground for the proliferation of fears, inhibiting activity and interfering with self-affirmation .

In the absence of identification with the mother, girls may also lose self-confidence. But unlike boys, they become more anxious than fearful. If, moreover, a girl cannot express love for her father, then cheerfulness decreases, and anxiety is supplemented by suspiciousness, which leads in adolescence to a depressive shade of mood, a feeling of worthlessness, uncertainty of feelings and desires.

Children aged 5-7 are often afraid of terrible dreams and death in their sleep. Moreover, the very fact of awareness of death as an irreparable misfortune, the cessation of life, occurs most often in a dream: “I was walking in the zoo, approached a lion’s cage, and the cage was open, the lion rushed at me and ate me” (reflection associated with the fear of death, fears attacks and animals in a 6-year-old girl), “I was swallowed by a crocodile” (6-year-old boy). The symbol of death is the omnipresent Baba Yaga, who in a dream chases children, catches them and throws them into the stove (in which the fear of fire, associated with the fear of death, is refracted).

Often in a dream, children of this age may dream of separation from their parents, due to the fear of their disappearance and loss. Such a dream precedes the fear of the death of parents at primary school age.

Thus, at 5-7 years old, dreams reproduce present, past (Baba Yaga) and future fears. This indirectly indicates the greatest saturation of the older preschool age fears.

Scary dreams also reflect the nature of the attitude of parents and adults towards children: “I go up the stairs, stumble, start falling down the steps and just can’t stop, and my grandmother, as luck would have it, takes out the newspapers and can’t do anything,” says girl 7 years old, given to the care of a restless and sick grandmother.

A 6-year-old boy, who has a strict father who prepares him for school, told us his dream: “I’m walking down the street and I see Koschey the Immortal coming towards me, he takes me to school and asks the problem: “What is 2+2? “Well, of course, I immediately woke up and asked my mother how much 2+2 would be, fell asleep again and answered Koshchei that it would be 4.” The fear of making a mistake haunts the child even in his sleep, and he seeks support from his mother.

The leading fear of older preschool age is the fear of death. Its occurrence means awareness of the irreversibility in space and time of age-related changes. The child begins to understand that growing up at some stage marks death, the inevitability of which causes anxiety as an emotional rejection of the rational need to die. One way or another, for the first time the child feels that death is an inevitable fact of his biography. As a rule, children themselves cope with such experiences, but only if there is a cheerful atmosphere in the family, if parents do not talk endlessly about illnesses, about the fact that someone has died and something can happen to him (the child) too . If the child is already restless, then worries of this kind will only increase the age-related fear of death.

Fear of death is a kind of moral and ethical category, indicating a certain maturity of feelings, their depth, and therefore is most pronounced in emotionally sensitive and impressionable children, who also have the ability for abstract, abstract thinking.

The fear of death is relatively more common in girls, which is associated with a more pronounced instinct of self-preservation in them, compared to boys. But in boys, there is a more tangible connection between the fear of death of themselves and subsequently of their parents with the fears of strangers, unfamiliar faces, starting from 8 months of life, that is, a boy who is afraid of other people will be more susceptible to the fear of death than a girl who does not have such a sharp oppositions.

According to correlation analysis, fear of death is closely related to fears of attack, darkness, fairy-tale characters (more active at 3-5 years old), illness and death of parents (older age), creepy dreams, animals, elements, fire, fire and war .

The last 6 fears are most typical for older preschool age. They, like those previously listed, are motivated by a threat to life, directly or indirectly. An attack by someone (including animals), as well as illness, can result in irreparable misfortune, injury, or death. The same applies to storm, hurricane, flood, earthquake, fire, fire and war as immediate threats to life. This justifies our definition of fear as an affectively sharpened instinct of self-preservation.

Under unfavorable life circumstances, the fear of death contributes to the intensification of many associated fears. Thus, a 7-year-old girl, after the death of her beloved hamster, became whiny, touchy, stopped laughing, could not watch or listen to fairy tales, because she cried bitterly out of pity for the characters and could not calm down for a long time.

The main thing was that she was terrified of dying in her sleep, like a hamster, so she could not fall asleep alone, experiencing spasms in her throat from excitement, attacks of suffocation and frequent urge to the toilet. Remembering how her mother once said in her hearts: “It would be better for me to die,” the girl began to fear for her life, as a result of which the mother was forced to sleep with her daughter.

As we see, the incident with the hamster occurred precisely at the age maximum of the fear of death, actualized it and led to an exorbitant growth in the impressionable girl’s imagination.

At one of the receptions we observed a capricious and stubborn, according to his mother, a 6-year-old boy who would not be left alone, could not stand darkness and heights, was afraid of being attacked, of being kidnapped, of getting lost in the crowd. He was afraid of bears and wolves even in pictures and because of this he could not watch children's programs. We received complete information about his fears from conversations and games with the boy himself, since for his mother he was just a stubborn child who did not obey her orders - to sleep, not to whine and to control himself.

By analyzing his fears, we wanted to understand what motivated them. They did not specifically ask about the fear of death, so as not to draw unnecessary attention to it, but this fear could be unmistakably “calculated” from the complex of associated fears of the dark, enclosed space, heights and animals.

In the dark, as in a crowd, you can disappear, dissolve, disappear; height implies the danger of falling; a wolf can bite, and a bear can crush. Consequently, all these fears meant a concrete threat to life, irreversible loss and disappearance of oneself. Why was the boy so afraid to disappear?

Firstly, the father left the family a year ago, disappearing, in the child’s mind, forever, since the mother did not allow him to meet. But something similar happened before, when a mother with an anxious and suspicious character overprotected her son and tried in every possible way to prevent the influence of a decisive father on him. However, after the divorce, the child became more unstable in behavior and capricious, at times hyperexcitable “for no reason,” was afraid of being attacked, and stopped being left alone. Soon other fears began to sound in full force.

Secondly, he has already “disappeared” as a boy, turned into a defenseless and timid creature without gender. His mother had, in her own words, boyish behavior as a child, and even now she considered her being female to be an annoying misunderstanding. Like most such women, she passionately wanted to have a daughter, rejecting her son's boyish character traits and not accepting him as a boy. She expressed her credo once and for all like this: “I don’t like boys at all!”

In general, this means that she does not like all male representatives, since she considers herself a “man”, and also earns more than ex-husband. Immediately after marriage, she, as an “emancipated” woman, launched an irreconcilable struggle for her “feminine dignity” and for the right to have sole control over the family.

But the husband also claimed a similar role in the family, so a struggle began between the spouses. When the father saw the futility of his attempts to influence his son, he left the family. It was when the boy developed the need to identify with the male role. The mother began to play the role of the father, but since she was anxious and suspicious and raised her son as a girl, the result of this was only an increase in fears in the “feminized” boy.

No wonder he was afraid that it would be stolen. His activity, independence and boyish self have already been “stole” from him. The boy's neurotic, painful state seemed to tell his mother that she needed to rebuild herself, but she stubbornly did not consider it necessary to do this, continuing to accuse her son of being stubborn.

After 10 years, she came to us again, complaining about her son’s refusal to attend school. This was a consequence of the inflexibility of her behavior and her son’s inability to communicate with peers at school.

In other cases, we are faced with a child’s fear of being late - for a visit, for kindergarten etc. The basis of the fear of being late, of not being on time, is the vague and anxious expectation of some kind of misfortune. Sometimes such fear takes on an obsessive, neurotic connotation when children torment their parents with endless questions and doubts like: “Won’t we be late?”, “Will we be on time?”, “Will you come?”

Expectation intolerance manifests itself in the fact that the child “emotionally burns out” before the onset of some specific, pre-planned event, for example, the arrival of guests, a visit to the cinema, etc.

Most often, the obsessive fear of being late is characteristic of boys with a high level of intellectual development, but with insufficiently expressed emotionality and spontaneity. They are looked after a lot, controlled, regulated every step by not very young and anxiously suspicious parents. In addition, mothers would prefer to see them as girls, and they treat boys’ willfulness with emphasized adherence to principles, intolerance and intransigence.

Both parents are characterized by a heightened sense of duty, the difficulty of compromise, combined with impatience and poor tolerance of expectation, maximalism and inflexibility of “all or nothing” thinking. Like fathers, boys are not confident in themselves and are afraid of not meeting the inflated demands of their parents. Figuratively speaking, boys, with an obsessive fear of being late, are afraid of not being able to catch their boyish train of life, rushing non-stop from the past to the future, bypassing the stop of the present.

The obsessive fear of being late is a symptom of a painfully acute and fatally insoluble internal anxiety, that is, neurotic anxiety, when the past frightens, the future worries, and the present excites and puzzles.

A neurotic form of expression of fear of death is the obsessive fear of infection. Usually this is an adult-instilled fear of diseases from which, according to them, you can die. Such fears fall on the fertile soil of increased age-related sensitivity to fears of death and blossom into the magnificent flower of neurotic fears.

This is what happened to a 6-year-old girl living with her suspicious grandmother. One day she read (she already knew how to read) in a pharmacy that she should not eat food that a fly would land on. Shocked by such a categorical ban, the girl began to feel guilty and worried about his repeated “violations.” She was afraid to leave food, it seemed to her that there were some dots on its surface, etc.

Gripped by the fear of getting infected and dying from it, she endlessly washed her hands and refused, despite thirst and hunger, to drink or eat at a party. Tension, stiffness and “confidence in reverse” appeared - intrusive thoughts about impending death from accidental consumption of contaminated food. Moreover, the threat of death was perceived literally, as something probable, as punishment, punishment for violating the ban.

To become infected with such fears, you need to be psychologically unprotected by your parents and already have a high level of anxiety, reinforced by a restless and protective grandmother in everything.

If we do not take such clinical cases, then the fear of death, as already noted, does not sound, but dissolves into the usual fears for a given age. However, it is better not to subject the psyche of emotionally sensitive, impressionable, nervously and somatically weakened children to additional tests such as surgery to remove the adenoids (there are conservative treatment methods), painful medical procedures without special need, separation from their parents and placement for several months in a “health center.” "sanatorium, etc. But this does not mean isolating children at home, creating for them an artificial environment that eliminates any difficulties and levels out their own experience of failures and achievements.

The period of adolescence is a very important and responsible stage in the development of personality. In developmental psychology, the period between 11 and 16 years of life is defined as transitional from childhood to adulthood and is associated with serious psychological restructuring. The teenager is influenced by new stress factors (puberty, increasing level of social demands). Adaptation mechanisms that have formed over more early age, stop working. Anxiety levels are rising. Various fears and phobias develop.

Psychologists divide all fears into three groups:

• biological (fear of pain, dangerous predators, natural disasters);
• social (fear of evaluation, failure, fear of not being accepted in the group);
• existential (fear of aging, death, isolation, freedom).

Each age period has its own set of fears. By the age of 11–13, children experience a decrease in the severity of biological fears and an increase in social and existential ones. This trend is one of the signs of the formation of self-awareness in adolescents.

Social fears

During adolescence, the child system develops through friendship with peers, which becomes one of the most significant values, and learns the rules of cooperation. Skills are acquired for establishing relationships and fulfilling social roles in adulthood.

The teenager’s sensitivity to reactions to him from strangers increases. There is a fear of being criticized because of appearance, lack of abilities and skills. From this arises constant alertness, suspicion when interacting with other people, and the desire to avoid certain situations. A defeatist sense of self can become fixed in the form of stuttering. Sometimes anxiety in social situations takes the form of aggressive, bullying behavior.

Physiological changes that occur during puberty increase social fears. A teenager may begin to experience fear of the opposite sex, fear of showing his inadequacy during sexual intercourse. Fear of sexual intercourse can arise not only due to a lack of experience, but also due to the need to be naked and demonstrate one’s imperfect body. It is during adolescence that body dysmorphia usually develops - a disorder in which a person is overly preoccupied with an imaginary or minor defect in his appearance.

The process of puberty and awakening sexuality also contributes to the development of specific phobias:

• fear of negative consequences of masturbation;
• fear of being homosexual;
• erotophobia.

Young girls may develop menophobia - fear of menstruation and associated pain, smells, and awkward situations. can worry not only girls, but also boys who are starting to have sex.

Fear of death in teenagers

The fear of death first appears at 3–5 years of age as a symptom of awakening self-awareness. In adolescence, the ability to operate with abstract concepts is finally formed, and the logic of an adult is formed. Explanations about the phenomenon of death received in childhood no longer satisfy the teenager. He is fully aware of the inevitability of the prospect of one day dying, disappearing.

Fear of death can manifest itself in increased interest in this topic, wearing clothes and accessories with appropriate symbols (skulls, crosses). A child can fight anxiety by mocking death, challenging it. Hence the love for horror films, the passion for computer games with an abundance of cruelty, and the craving for extreme entertainment. Recklessly risking his life and health, the child tries to achieve a feeling of superiority over death, to regain a sense of control.

Correction of phobias and fears of adolescents

Working with teenage phobias has its own specifics. If only because the teenager, instead of asking for help, tries to carefully hide the reasons for his anxiety.

Fear of your body

It is easier to prevent adolescents’ fears associated with physiological changes during puberty than to deal with their unpleasant consequences. In dealing with this problem, a thorough study of the subject of fear will help - preliminary preparation of the child for the changes that will occur during puberty.

Girls need to be explained in detail what menstruation is as early as 10 years old, since most people get their periods at 11–12 years of age. Moreover, information about the physiology of pregnancy should be presented in a positive way - no colorful stories about unbearable pain during menstruation or childbirth. A girl should know how to relieve pain during menstruation, and not only with medication.

The boy also needs to be aware in advance of the changes that will soon occur to him. For example, you need to explain that nocturnal emissions are a completely normal physiological phenomenon and happen to everyone.

It is necessary to warn the child that he will soon develop secondary sexual characteristics. That girls’ breasts will begin to grow, their hips will become wider, and boys’ external genitalia will increase in size. Explain where hair will grow, and what ways you can get rid of it, how to care for your skin and genitals. If a teenager gets all the necessary information from his parents, and not from friends or through the media, then there is no need to worry about body dysmorphia.

It is advisable that an explanatory conversation with a teenager be conducted by a parent of the same sex or an adult with whom the child sympathizes. It is important to assure the teenager that there is no need to be ashamed of changes in the body and that with any problem he can turn to his parents for help.

Fear of death in teenagers: how to help?

If a child needs to find out what exactly he is afraid of. Sometimes simply voicing your fears reduces their intensity. It is possible that something else is hidden behind the fear of death.

For example, a teenager is worried not by the prospect of death itself, but by the circumstances that often accompany death. They fear severe physical pain, debilitating illness, and the resulting loss of self-esteem. A special place is occupied by the fear of losing loved ones, which may hide psychological dependence on parents and lack of independence.

In order for a teenager to open up, you yourself need to be ready to talk openly about own feelings and fears associated with death. If you do not feel able to openly discuss this topic, it is better to seek help from a psychologist.

Art therapy also helps to relieve the psyche. The technique is based on the mechanism of sublimation, that is, the transfer of disturbing thoughts and experiences to the result of creativity. Ask your child to draw on paper what exactly frightens him about death. And also illustrate the sensations in the body that arise during an attack of fear. You can personify death: make a mask for a child and ask the child to play the role of an old woman with a scythe. This exercise will help transform the associations associated with this topic into something calmer and neutral.

Try to explain to your child that the emotion of fear arises only in response to negative ideas about death. No one knows for sure - neither scientists nor priests - what happens when a person dies. No one can even predict with one hundred percent certainty what will happen in the next minute. There is beauty in the unpredictability of life. Awareness of the transience of time helps to live life more fully and richly, set priorities correctly, and value important relationships more.

Hypnosis sessions with practicing specialists, for example, a psychologist-hypnologist, help to cope with thanatophobia. Baturin Nikita Valerievich. To relieve symptoms, we recommend listening to audio trance:

Exercises to correct social fears

Children waste a lot of mental energy in pursuit of prestige and popularity among their peers. In addition, there remains the fear of not meeting the expectations of parents and teachers, and not living up to the role of a good student.

Treatment of social fears in adolescents can be carried out in several directions:

• cognitive therapy;
• improving communication skills;
• drug therapy.

Cognitive approach

“Cognitive” means “relating to cognition, the operation of concepts.” Cognitive therapy is aimed at changing the perception of people and social situations, increasing self-esteem.

Social phobes often believe that the only way to avoid feelings of shame and fear is to avoid participating in situations in which these negative emotions appear. The three-column method will help you understand that the source of negative emotions is always the teenager himself, and not circumstances.

Frightening situations are recorded in the first column. For example, giving a report in front of the class. The second includes real reasons that cause fear. For example, fears that a teenager will forget the text of a report and make himself look like a fool in front of classmates and the teacher. The third contains positive scenarios for the development of events: the performance will go well, the teacher will give a high score.

Having scrolled through each future option in his imagination, the teenager will understand that the problem is only in his negative expectations. By changing negative thoughts to positive or neutral ones, he will get rid of anxiety. To change the pessimistic scenario, you need to perform the following steps. Invite your teenager to do something that usually lifts his mood (take a walk in a beautiful park, play with a dog, listen to his favorite music, devote time to his favorite hobby). Next, have him close his eyes and imagine in detail how he copes with fear and successfully performs actions that frighten him.

There are also many false ideas that make it difficult to perceive reality objectively and provoke anxiety. Let's look at examples of changing misconceptions.

1. False judgment: everyone is looking at me. Correction: look around, count how many people really pay attention to you, and whether they react negatively.
2. False judgment: Everyone will think I'm stupid if I blush or stutter. Correction: ask your friends what they really feel when someone next to them begins to feel embarrassed and worried. Do you feel hostility? Are they trying to calm the person down? Do they hope he will get better soon?

It is important to find the central erroneous belief, which is the main cause of fear in a teenager. As a rule, these are ideas that people in general are aggressive, and the belief that the teenager has nothing to oppose to the negativity coming from them.

Cognitive therapy for social fears is often complemented by hypnosis, which helps to consolidate new positive ideas about yourself and the people around you.

It is important to keep track of who is the reference group for the child - an imaginary or real group of people who are a kind of standard, a frame of reference for themselves and others. The more experience a child has of observing different people, the more diverse role models there are, the more comfortable he feels as he is, without trying to drive himself into the narrow framework of normality established by his immediate social circle.

Improving communication skills

The best way to cope with shyness is to help a psychologist in special group classes for teenagers. But parents themselves can do something.

1. Practice eye contact. Often a child is embarrassed by looking a stranger in the eyes. Advise your teenager to look at the bridge of the interlocutor’s nose. This little trick will help him avoid feeling awkward in a conversation.
2. Teach your child common phrases: how to start and end a conversation, how to ask a girl out on a date and how to politely refuse, how to respond to rudeness. Having found himself in a new, atypical situation for him, the child will not be confused and will know what to do to get out of it with dignity.
3. Encourage your teen to practice communication skills with younger children. As a rule, in such cases the teenager experiences less awkwardness than when communicating with peers.

If fears in teenagers provoke panic attacks, it makes sense to contact

In the process of raising a child, at each age period, you encounter various difficulties. The appearance of phobias is one of the problems that can appear at any stage of a little person’s growing up. What to do if a child is afraid of death. How dangerous is this fear and does it have normal limits? What are age characteristics anxiety.

We'll talk about this today.

Fear of death

Fear of death is considered one of the strongest human phobias, which can form in childhood. How a child will relate to the finitude of earthly existence depends entirely on you and your loved ones.

The fear of death in children has options:

1. Fear of dying yourself or losing loved ones;
2. It may underlie other fears: darkness, illness, confined space, attack, war, or being left alone at home (read the article on the topic: The child is afraid to stay in the room and at home alone >>>).

A moderate fear of death is not a pathology, but indicates the full development of the child’s psyche. The manifestation of the anomaly will be extreme forms: from complete indifference to one’s existence to horror of the inevitability.

The baby needs to understand and process information about the finitude of life, otherwise the fear can go deep into the subconscious, intertwine with other phobias and interfere with normal communication.

Interesting fact! Children from believing families experience the fear of death much less frequently and in a less safe form. Since Christian teaching asserts that human life never ends, and after the death of the body, the soul continues to live.

Causes of fear at different ages

In each child, the fear of death manifests itself to an individual degree and has different origins. The reasons for severe fear may be:

• death of a loved one or beloved pet;
• sensitive type of the child’s nervous system (current article on the topic: >>>);
• frequent illnesses of the baby;
• growing up in a single-parent family.

If you know the reason, then you definitely need to talk to the child. The main message of such conversations is your sincere desire to help your child understand complex issues, showing care, love and interest in his problem. Don’t worry, if the basis is love, then the right words will definitely be found.

Important! Keep in mind that girls are more likely to be afraid of death than boys.

Up to 3 years

1. The first three years of life, the baby actively explores the world and issues such as death do not concern his consciousness;
2. He perceives people and the environment as a constant;
3. The little pioneer is very attached to mom and dad, and does not think of himself as a separate person. Therefore, until the age of three, the problem of fear of death will not arise for you. Take the opportunity to be well prepared for the conversation ahead.

From 3 to 7

• After 3 years, your child not only gains new knowledge, but also appreciates it;
• At this stage of growing up, the baby feels invulnerable, while the child is afraid of the death of his parents or other close people - all this can become the basis for strong feelings , that you need to work with. The fear of losing mom and dad on a psychological level is perceived by the baby as a loss of care, support, attention, protection;
• This age period is characterized by a close interweaving of several baby fears: darkness (read what to do in this case in the current article: A child is afraid of the dark >>>), confined space, fear of falling asleep, as possible scary dreams, where someone wants to eat a child, or certain entities attack;
• Thus, the fear of death in preschool children acquires vague features, forming a kind of hodgepodge of several different fears, which are mostly based on the instinct of self-preservation;
• By the age of 5, your baby develops abstract thinking and is interested in categories such as space and time. An understanding of the finitude of existence of natural phenomena and humans comes, your child will begin to ask questions regarding the topic of death and everything connected with it.

Over 7

After 7 years, your children develop a conscious idea of ​​the end of life as an inevitable establishment, reconciliation with this fact, or the phobia develops into a pathological form.

Know! Fear of death has open and hidden forms. The first option is a direct fear of dying, and in the second case, the phobia is expressed through fear of sharp objects, water, fire, natural disasters, high altitudes, choking on food - everything that could hypothetically lead to death.

The fear of death in children of primary school age is more difficult to diagnose due to the developed sense of shame and the need for personal space. The child is able to carefully hide his experiences. New emotions in connection with attending school and the acquisition of additional fears of a social nature may complicate the situation for you.

Teenagers

1. The immaturity of the teenage psyche is expressed in a tendency towards magical consciousness and increased interest in the topic of death;
2. Impressive natures have a wild imagination: they pay increased attention to signs and symbols, invent various horror stories about vampires and ghosts, scaring each other;
3. Moderate manifestation of fear of death in your teenager is the key to normal personality development;
4. The fear of dying in children of high school age is intensively disguised as various kinds of social phobias; moreover, your matured child may become very withdrawn into himself. If you have excellent contact and mutual trust, then it will be much easier for you to help him cope with the difficulties that arise.

No matter what age the question of death arises in your baby, the main thing is not to brush it off with excuses, honestly answer the questions that arise, and dispel doubts. And ideally, prepare for the conversation in advance, so that if your little one has any worries, you can have a useful conversation with him without delay.

Important! Do not attribute the death of a loved one to sleep or a long absence. This can provoke additional fears and, when the deception is revealed, the baby will receive psychological trauma.

If you determine that a child is afraid of death, what to do in such a situation? Consider a few universal useful tips, but consider the age of the baby.

• Throughout the entire period of development of the child’s psyche, show attention, patience, care, and love towards the baby;
• If grief has occurred in the family and the child has questions, be sure to answer them as correctly as possible. If you don’t have the strength to have such conversations, ask a loved one to talk to your child;
• Don't discuss your feelings about death in front of your baby;
• A moderate dose of new emotions: a circus, a park, a theater - will help distract an impressionable child from negative experiences. The main thing is not to overdo it;
• Explain death with the most neutral interpretations: old age or serious illness;
• During an exacerbation of fear, do not send your child to a health camp and, if possible, reduce trips to hospitals (current article on the topic: The child is afraid of doctors >>>);
• Dream with your baby about his future: profession, family;
• Consider the fact that the fear of death is often accompanied by a fear of the dark, closed space, and loneliness. If you discover additional phobias, eradicate them too;
• Do not allow your child to watch films with bloody scenes, cruelty and violence on TV or on the Internet;
• Read to your child fiction, where the author talks about his death in accessible language. For example, P. Stalfelt “The Book of Death”, G. H. Andersen’s fairy tales “The Little Mermaid”, “Angel”, “The Little Match Girl”.

The works of modern psychologists can help a child overcome the fear of death:

1. Therapeutic fairy tale by psychologist I. Gavrilova “Droplet”;
2. M. Antonov “Sunbeam”;
3. T. Grisa “The Magical Purpose of the Genie.”

If you discover a fear of death in a child, what to do in this case, how to behave correctly? To begin with, understand that there is nothing wrong with such questions from the baby, this is a full-fledged stage of personality development. In order to clearly tell him about the end of life, parents must first accurately determine their position in relation to death and find the right words for a child whom no one knows better than you.