If you are like most parents, you can probably remember the last time your children got into a little spat. In our home, our children really have a difficult time working together when it comes to tackling chores, which is never fun to deal with. It isn't fun to listen to them fighting when you have so many other things to do, which is why I started doing what I could to manage them together. We began working towards helping our children to master important concepts, and it was really cool to see our efforts start to gel. Now they can work together for the most part without struggling. Read more on this website.
Raising a child with a phobia is often very challenging, no matter what that child is fearful of. Everyday life, school, sleep, family events, and even your work schedule are all at the mercy of the fear your child is struggling with. In fact, the whole family may be in sporadic upheaval due to the unpredictable and overwhelming consequences of one member having a phobia.
Your child (along with you and the rest of the family) needs help in addressing the fear and all that comes with it, and you can get that help with your local child psychiatric services. Here are some of the most important coping tactics you'll learn:
1. How to Put Fear in its Place
As alarming and even paralyzing as fear can be, it's most often a distortion of something in the real world. Therapy can help your child realize how they're allowing the fear to grow, fester and take over their whole thought process, when, in fact, they have control and the ability to squelch the fear they're gripped by. You'll need to help your child practice putting fear in its place, but that process should show you the progress they're making and be an encouragement to both of you.
2. How an Active Imagination Contributes to Phobias
Learning to cope with a phobia means putting it into perspective, especially in the fertile imagination of a child. Imaginations can get the best of adults, too, demonstrating how powerful this aspect of the human mind can be; however, your child will learn how their own imagination propagates their uncomfortable, sometimes terrifying thoughts and feelings.
3. The Value of Talking to Oneself When Fear Strikes
Wherever your child happens to be when fear strikes, they need to learn to let their inner voice speak up and to trust that voice of reason. Psychotherapy educates both child and parent on the thinking process behind phobias and how to turn the panicked inner voice into one of rationality and reassurance.
4. How Controlled Breathing Can Help
Deep, intentional breathing raises oxygen levels in the brain, thereby positively stimulating the nervous system, which controls things like muscle tension, upset stomach and heart rate. Learning to breathe with intent will do a lot for your phobic child, offering immediate relief during an incident of fear, along with helping them balance themselves emotionally and physically when practiced on a regular basis.
5. The Importance of Exercise, Sleep & Healthy Eating
As a coping method, a healthy lifestyle empowers both the mind and body, at any age. For a child with any psychiatric challenge, eating well, getting plenty of quality sleep and exercising is even more vital. Foods processed in the digestive tract actually have a strong impact on hormones secreted by the body and electrical activity in the brain, meaning eating better foods can help your child fight the phobia. The connection between good food and good moods is being established by science more strongly these days, so your whole family has even more reason to eat well.
It is going to be okay, after all, but while your child is learning to cope with and control their fear, it may not seem like it. Everyone in the family benefits when the phobic child gets help, and eventually, your lives can resume a normal course, unmarked by the overwhelming presence of fear. To learn more, contact child psychiatric services such as Linet Les.
Share28 May 2019
