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When fear takes over: Children's phobias

An age-by-age guide to children and phobias

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Originally published in Today's Parent September 2006

Dawson Penney’s second birthday party started out in typical festive fashion, with cake, games and treats. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary — that is, until party guests showed up with balloons. “He started screaming,” recalls his mom, Susanne, of Hanmer, Ont. “We thought he was joking at first.”

But it was no joke. Penney says her son was “deathly afraid” of balloons for the next 2½ years. Whenever he saw the offending inflatables, “he would run and hide, scream and cry.” If he was invited to a party, his parents had to ask that all balloons be put away first.

Extreme behaviour like this can be baffling to a parent, who may wonder what on earth is going on. “We all have fears,” points out Doug Symons, a child clinical psychologist at Acadia University in Wolfville, NS. “When they’re excessive and begin to interfere with your life, we define them as phobias.” About one in 30 kids will develop a bona fide phobia that fits the official diagnostic criteria. Phobias are persistent — lasting several months, not just a day or two — and they can compromise some everyday activities such as playing, going to the park or shopping.

Phobias can develop at almost any age. And they can be long-lasting: Many children who are afraid of spiders continue to battle an arachnid aversion as adults 30 years later.

There’s an evolutionary explanation behind many types of strong fears. It stands to reason that prehistoric preschoolers who were terrified of big animals, deep water and snakes were more likely to survive than their less cautious cohorts. Other phobias seem to arise from first-hand experience. For instance, Dawson Penney lost a helium balloon to the wide blue sky shortly before he became afraid of balloons. And even just bearing witness to an experience can provoke a phobia. My seven-year-old daughter developed a fear of elevators when she saw a group of people trapped in an elevator at the mall.

Phobias also appear to have family roots. Children with phobias often have a parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle with an irrational fear or two, suggesting a genetic link. Or they can simply be copying a fear response they’ve seen modelled by worrywart parents, notes child psychiatrist Klaus Minde, head of an anxiety clinic at Montreal Children’s Hospital.

No matter what is sending your child into a panic, there are ways parents can help at every age.

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