Fear No Evil: Raising a trusting child in a violent world

I awoke with a start one night to see our son, Kevin, standing at the side of our bed.

“Mommy,” he cried. “I can’t fall asleep. I keep thinking about different ways that bad people could hurt us and I’m afraid that one of them is coming into our house tonight.”

We murmured a few soothing words as Kevin climbed into bed with us and we cuddled him back to sleep.

The next day I thought about my son’s fear and realized it would continue unless I could help him deal with it. So I started researching and began to understand how our children are bombarded every day with negative and frightening images of the world around them. As the information age has progressed, so too has the distortion that there is more bad than good in our society. Children can easily become overwhelmed by the possibility that someone bad will hurt them or their loved ones.

Television is particularly influential, with its newscasts and news-magazine shows that spotlight and sensationalize violent crimes. Attempts to avoid these programs often are thwarted by news “updates” and “promos” that air during family viewing.

“Local news coverage brings into our living rooms the shootings that have happened within our community. National news brings us wars and hatred,” says Martie Martin, PhD, a child development professor at Mesa Community College. “Both give us graphic exposure to violence and death that is frightening to us all.”

These images, no matter how brief their duration, have a particular impact on young children.

“Preschoolers are inherently concrete thinkers,” explains Eric Benjamin, M.D., a child psychiatrist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. “What they see is what they believe.” Thus, a child will generally accept a newscast, with its predominately negative stories, as a daily compilation of everything that’s happened outside his or her door.

Children have little real­-world experience to help them recognize and critically evaluate the unrealistic portrayal of how prevalent violence is in our society.

“They come to see these behaviors as normal and acceptable. They see the world as a place where people can harm them and they can harm people,” says Nancy Carlsson­-Paige, Ed.D., professor of education at Lesley College in Cambridge, Mass., and author of several books and articles on the impact of media violence on children.

“The implication that there is more bad than good in the world threatens healthy emotional development, specifically the basic emotional needs of trust and security,” Martin says. “This results in children being insecure and clingy rather than trusting enough to explore and learn.”

Children may even question the safety of their own homes and the ability of their parents to protect them.

According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), a consistent, caring and responsive parent is a child’s most important buffer to a frightening outside world.

“The parent’s role in a child’s life is to always keep him safe,” Dorothy Hansen, Ph.D., director of the Deer Valley Unified School District’s Head Start Program, stated at a recent conference on children and violence sponsored by the Valley of the Sun Association for the Education of Young Children, the local NAEYC affiliate. “If he believes that there is a monster in the closet, we open the closet to show him that there is no monster and then promise to always keep him safe.”

But how do parents address a children’s fear that bad people are lurking in the bushes waiting to hurt them or their loved ones, which is much different from a fear of monsters? As my son said to me, “I know monsters aren’t real. But burglars are.”

One approach that is ineffective and may even escalate your child’s anxiety is minimizing or ignoring fear, writes Jeffrey L. Brown, M.D., in his book No More Monsters in the Closet: Teaching Your Children to Overcome Everyday Fears and Phobias. It does nothing to help teach coping skills and can be detrimental to feelings of self­-worth.

Instead, share your own childhood fears and how you handled them, as well as religious accounts of courage in the face of danger.

“Your family’s spiritual beliefs can be helpful because the fear of violence is essentially the fear of bodily harm and even death,” Benjamin says. Blend these serious conversations with more lighthearted ones, always being careful to respond in an age-appropriate manner. Remember to talk with your child at eye­ level and in a loving, self-assured tone.

When my daughter Tabitha was younger and terrified of thunderstorms, I told her that I had felt the same as a child until I watched one from my window, rather than from under my blankets, and discovered the storm’s beauty. Sharing this helped her to face, and eventually overcome, her own fear.

It’s also important to monitor your child’s TV viewing, Martin says. She recommends sitting with school-age children when they watch TV news and asking questions to determine their level of understanding and interpretation. (Everyone interviewed for this article discouraged the exposure of preschool children to TV news.)

Although most children are vocal about their needs, many are unable to directly communicate just how helpless and frightened they feel. Increased aggression, hyperactivity, impulsiveness, withdrawal, distractibility, trembling, sweating, thumb sucking and toileting accidents all are behaviors that may signal your child is having difficulty handling fear of violent crime, according to research compiled by the Childcare Information Exchange based in Redmond, Wash.

So are recurrent nightmares or daytime worry of being a victim of violence, an inability to eat or a sudden fear of sleeping alone or going to school or child care, says Beverly Roberson Jackson, Ed.D., director of public policy/public education at Zero to Three/National Center for Clinical Infant Programs in Washington, D.C. Taken to the extreme, these behaviors may represent a deeper problem and a pediatrician should be consulted.

However, in most cases, parental involvement is sufficient for a child to overcome fear of violent crime. One way is to strengthen the sanctuary of your home by stressing the safety of your neighborhood.

“Tell your children that is why you moved there,” Benjamin advises. “Parents have to assure their children that they themselves feel safe. Don’t worry about deceiving your children if you tell them you feel safer than you actually do because children cannot tolerate ambivalence.”

Benjamin also suggests that, when tucking your child into bed, you “express with very concrete examples why you feel safe. For example, a burglar is not going to break into our home because the doors and windows are locked, the alarm is on and we have a dog.”

Joyce Davis, M.Ed., a professor of psychology at Mesa Community College and founder of the LYRA Institute, which teaches parent effectiveness training, agrees. She takes it one step further by involving the child in the process: “Ask if your child would like to help you lock up or check the alarm to see that all is safe.”

“Assurance,” Davis says, “is the building of empowerment and confidence in a child. Life’s situations can vary but everyone, even a young child, has the ability to make the necessary decisions. Let your children know that, although bad things may happen sometimes to some people, you as a parent are doing everything possible to keep them safe and teach them how to keep them­selves safe. And even if the worst happens, they will still be okay and go on with their lives.”

Because children learn best through critical thinking, decision making and modeling, Davis suggests allowing your children to role play certain situations. “While driving on a deserted stretch of highway, ask your child, ‘What would we do if this bad thing happened? What would we do if this good thing happened?’ ” By thinking out and determining their own solutions to hypothetical risk situations, children gain confidence in their ability to make necessary decisions.

Is it possible to cultivate street smarts without robbing our children of their childhood innocence?

“This is tricky for many parents,” Benjamin says. “Some are overly cautious and their children grow up almost living in barracks. It’s better to have your children grow up believing it’s a safe world through parental boundaries.”

“Because of the nature of our society, we no longer have the luxury of never being at risk,” Davis says. “However, a balance between self­-defense and trust is necessary for a person’s well­-being. We accomplish this balance, and set an example for our children, by living a prudent lifestyle.”

In the final analysis, it’s up to parents to teach children to seek and find the good in others and in the world, rather than to anticipate and accept the bad. Sadly, it is true that horrific crimes are committed against people, including children, and sometimes the confines of home don’t protect them.

But contrary to what media reports might have us believe, these occurrences are rare. The inordinate amount of attention given by the media and by ourselves to the “bad news” rather than the “good news” is human nature.

As parents, we are more likely to reprimand our children for “bad” behavior than we are to commend them for “good” behavior.

In daily living, we are quick to recognize our problems, taking many blessings for granted. Our children need us to believe that there is still more good than bad in this world. We owe them that.

Raising children to resist violence

Research has shown that violent or aggressive behavior is often learned early in life. With that in mind, the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics published “Raising Children to Resist Violence: What You Can Do,” designed to help parents and professionals reduce youth violence. The brochure explains that parents play a valuable role in reducing violence by raising children in safe and loving homes. Some of the ways to do that include:

• Giving your children consistent love and attention.
• Making sure your children are supervised.
• Showing your children appropriate behaviors by the way you act.
• Refraining from physical punishment. “Hitting, slapping or spanking children as punishment shows them that it’s okay to hit others to solve problems and can train them to punish others in the same way they were punished,” the brochure says.
• Being consistent about rules and discipline.
• Making sure your children do not have access to guns.
• Working toward making your home a safe, nonviolent place and discouraging violent behavior between siblings.
• Keeping your children from viewing excessive violence in television, the movies and video games.
• Teaching your children ways to avoid becoming victims of violence. Make sure they know the safest routes for walking the neighborhood, encourage them to walk with a friend at all times and stress the dangers of talking to strangers.
• Helping your children stand up against violence. Children need to “understand that it takes more courage and leadership to resist violence than to go along with it,” the brochure says.

The brochure recommends that adults set a good example by:

• Taking care of themselves and their communities.
• Staying involved with friends, neighbors and family.
• Making sure guns are not available in their areas.
• Volunteering to help in neighborhood anti­-crime efforts or in programs to make schools safer for children.
• Letting elected officials know that preventing violence is important.
• Complaining to television stations and advertisers who sponsor violent programming.
• Encouraging their children to get involved in groups that build community pride.

In addition to elaborating on these and other points, the brochure describes potential warning signs that may indicate a need for professional intervention to prevent violent behavior in children at the preschool, elementary school and teenage levels.

To receive a copy of the brochure, send a self­-addressed, stamped legal-­size envelope to: American Academy of Pediatrics, Division of Publications, 141 Northwest Point Blvd., P.O. Box 927, Elk Grove, IL 60009­-0927.

For more information, call the Arizona Chapter at 602-532-01379.