Fear of sleeping alone, how to help children overcome it?
The clearest proof that a child has reached maturity is emancipation. However, before this happens, many other situations are giving autonomy to children and young people. An example is the fact of starting sleep alone, without the company of any other person and start managing your own space: your room.
However, this process that reaches every child can involve the appearance of certain fears. Especially if so far have shared a room with their parents, who inspired security to their dreams. But the lack of light and the absence of someone who could defend them in case of threat, make these terrors appear at night avoiding their sleep. Therefore, from the Baby Center Foundation a series of guidelines are given so that parents can help their children to overcome these situations.
What are children afraid of at night?
Most children who experience fear at the time of going to bed they usually have it to the unknown. After a day of light, touch darkness in a context where you are alone. It is then where the imagination starts and any noise, or shape that does not identify, is presented as a threat. Those beings that you have seen in series or read in books seem real.
These fears are accentuated even more if the child awakens from a nightmare. That terrifying thing with what he has just dreamed accompanies the real world, in his imagination, and the fear that it appears at any moment makes it difficult for him to To fall asleep. In other cases the presence of these terrors can respond to the presence in their memories of a traumatic event: a strong fall, witnessing an accident, etc.
In any case, the task of parents is to teach their children to differentiate between the real world and fantasy, between the world of dreams and the one they live in their day to day. A task in which from time to time they will have to go to the call of their children, but in which little by little they will have to disconnect their presence so that they gain autonomy.
What can parents do in the face of childhood fear?
On behalf of parents, you can help children in many ways overcome these fears and learn to sleep peacefully at night:
- Differences between the real world and fantasy. Parents must teach their children that what they imagine is in their mind and not on this plane, therefore what they dream or have terrors does not exist and therefore can not really hurt them.
- Avoid scary stories. If the mission is to avoid fear, stories like those of Coco or Saco Man have no reason to be. Resorting to these characters to get the child to behave well will only generate in them a terror that can manifest itself at night.
- Monitor the contents. No scary movies before going to sleep or readings with drawings of abominable beings. Age-appropriate content will not surprise you or predispose you to fear.
- Accompany but not constantly. If the child has a nightmare go to their room and calm them is a good option, generate a habit of staying to sleep with them so they are quiet is not recommended and then never gain the necessary autonomy.
- Ask for help. If in spite of all the child continues to express these fears, we must ask for professional help to detect possible traumas and ingrained memories that explain the presence of these night terrors.
Damián Montero
