HEALTH PLUS:The first thing a child does when it is uncertain is check out the parental reaction
WHAT WE fear, our children fear. They are so attuned to our facial expression, our body tension, to apprehension in our eyes and how counterfeit our camouflage of what we fear is that it is almost inevitable.
Unless, of course, we can find ways of inviting them, or distracting them, into another version of what is fearful: into something funny, or creative, or silly.
Unless we can do or say something that takes the harm out of situations and makes them harmless, so that irrational or excessive fears do not infiltrate their thinking during their formative years.
We can do this by telling stories. One example is "they're having a hooley in Heaven". This description for the tiny child of thunder storms that shake the elements, invites the child into exciting, imaginative, dramatic participation in what otherwise might be fearful.
The loud repetitious claps of thunder: what stamping of heavy boots, what tap-dancing, what rowdiness! The flashes of lightning: look fireworks, what brightness, what revelling they are doing up there. If we listen and look we can figure out what they are doing and enjoy it too.
Parents are good at interpreting storms because they have heard them have parties in heaven before.
Sometimes there is silence. Someone has said, "tone it down, not so loud, you'll wake everyone up on earth". There is a lull, but it won't last. No, the shenanigans are starting up again. They are having a céilí. Lines and lines of them gathering, dancing and stamping their feet. What fun they are having in heaven.
What rain! They are spilling their drinks, lemonade torrenting down. They don't have too many parties but this may go on all night. Things will be quiet tomorrow. They will be tired. They will sleep for at least a day. For it is always calm after a stormy party in heaven.
Before psychology there was wisdom in the stories children were told and the metaphors used to ensure that life was imaginative, comprehensible and manageable.
Many reading this may remember the poem about the night "when they draw a big, big curtain over all the world so you only see the black and you don't see any blue and the stars are the little holes where the light shines through".
While this metaphor may be as factually offensive to the astronomer as the thunder metaphor to the meteorologist, while both ideas may offend the literal mind, we must remember that childhood fears are not about facts.
Childhood fears are not about rationality, they are about those first emotional experiences when something new or potentially frightening is encountered. What happens, who is there, how that person responds and whether or not they provided a funny story or a fearful reaction will influence the child thereafter.
Fear is learned. The first thing a child does when it is uncertain is check out the parental reaction, the facial expressions and fear response of others. That is why most members of generations of families may fear cats, dogs, mice, rats or snakes, wasps, storms or other people.
Fear is contagious, as the ignominious, rather unethical experiment by early behaviourist JB Watson demonstrates, when poor toddler Vincent, who had no fear of rabbits, was terrified by another child's fear of them.
Fear can develop by association: the colour of the dentist's door, the smell of the hospital if a painful procedure happened, the sounds that surrounded a fall, the sight of water if one fell in when young.
Fear is a universal response. The universality of some fears across cultures, especially of the dark and of strangers, supports the idea that there may be a biological or genetic factor in it.
Fear is also protective. It is essential to survival and different fears arise at different ages. It is just that it takes time to understand what warrants fear and what does not, what is a real threat, what is low risk, what is imagined and what is no threat at all.
Also there may be temperamental differences, even in one family. One child may fear everything while another child may be dangerously unaware of ordinary risk.
How we understand and respond to children's fears is important. We have a wonderful opportunity with young children to invite them into creative challenges to their fears: rhymes, songs and stories, imaginative descriptions, witty, irreverent ideas about them, so that they are not burdened by too many fears throughout life.
• Clinical psychologist Marie Murray is director of the Student Counselling Services in UCD