How do I handle spooky season?
This time of year means many things for different people. For some, the smell of the air as the leaves begin to fall coupled with the increased availability of pumpkin spice, apple cinnamon and s’mores flavored products is a boon. For others, it’s a time to gather for spiritual festivals to celebrate the end of the harvest season and others for secular parties dressed in your most excellent Halloween attire. In the words of one of my close friends who happens to be a nonbinary, Jewish therapist, Halloween is like “gay Christmas.” But for the parents of anxious children, the days leading up to October 31 represent the sporadic, unpredictable challenges of “spooky season.”
Whether its Halloween specials filling the queue on streaming services or the occasional billboard on big city roads with Freddy Kruger and Chucky advertising some new iteration of the classic horror films, parents of anxious children have got their hands full. Some of the themes popularized by modern displays associated with Halloween are deeply associated with fears that are practically baked into our DNA to aid in survival: the dark, the unknown, death, change, and predators stronger than we are. It’s pretty inevitable that come October, we are going to start seeing a barrage of pumpkins and black cats, but for the anxious child trying to fall asleep at night, their minds sure are going to latch on to the one time they heard a reference to Slender Man or saw hyperrealistic gorecore make-up.
One of the great things about humans is that we possess the ability to take a beat and pause before responding, though changing behavior patterns to the point that our conscientious choices become second nature can be very difficult. Children also have a much harder time recognizing their inner speech and thought processes than adults do. These skills (called metacognition) can also be a struggle for some adults, especially when our threat detection system is already signaling a five alarm fire, which is precisely what happens to many parents in the presence of their child’s distress. Despite the fact that Halloween comes every year without posing any true threat to children, our nervous systems know no different. Rather than get into a battle of wills with the fearful child begging for you to co-sleep, many parents will accommodate their child’s anxiety, just to get a restful night’s sleep themselves.
Because understanding our thoughts and feelings and resisting the urge to act on impulse are just a tad out of reach for most children, the important grown ups in their lives are uniquely situated to help them work through moments of intense fear about monsters, the dark and the like this month. Children look to their grown ups, whether consciously or not, to determine how to respond in a situation, yet parents often feel unsure of what to do themselves! Below are some steps that you can take to make this spooky season a little easier for you and your child.
Hold space for your own impulse first. When children express strong fears of these things, one strategy that can help caregivers lower their own urgency to respond to their children’s expressions of distress is to remind themself, “my kid’s got the brain of our overprepared ancestors.” For the particularly science-minded parent, we can couch that in evolutionary terms: your kid would have been a lot more likely to survive in a society in which curiosity about the darkness beyond the trees posed the possibility of actually getting gobbled up. The problem is not fear or anxiety. The problem is how we respond to those emotions.
Accept your child’s emotions. Acceptance means validating, saying something like “I can see that you are scared,” or “You are feeling worried right now about Slender Man.” Acceptance does not mean agreeing. You neither have to feel the same way as your child, nor agree that the emotion fits the situation. Emotions are not things that can be right or wrong, anymore than a sunset is right or wrong. It just is.
Show, don’t tell, the kid whether there is or is not danger. So many well intentioned parents promise their children there are no monsters, boogeymen, etc., that nothing will go bump in the night, that bad things won’t befall them or that they will always be there for the child. Any survivor of trauma can tell you that these promises don’t account for their reality when they have already been through something. Similarly, for the anxious child, uncertainty reigns supreme and reassurance that there are no monsters feeds fear rather than starves it. It is more effective to parent based on what is happening in this very moment. If there is no danger right now, respond like there is no danger right now. If we run into the room and scoop the child in our arms, we are conveying to them that they are unsafe. The more empathetic a parent is, usually the harder it is to swallow this particular pill. If instead, we behave calmly by moving slowly, using a steady tone of voice, and giving our full attention to the child’s feelings (and their ability to cope with them), we are conveying that this is a situation that is safe to be relaxed in and at ease.
Express confidence in the child’s ability to cope. While a big part of the job of being a parent is to protect your child, the other part of the role requires that caregivers step back so the child can develop skills on their own. We foster independence by giving space. Parents—like therapists— are planning for their own obsolescence. Keep in mind that expressing confidence without step #2 of validating their emotions can come across as demanding, so it’s important to maintain balance. For example, “I hear you are scared of Slender Man, and I know you can handle it.”
Reflect on their success. After the challenging moment, highlight to your child how brave they were. Ask them what they learned about fear or anxiety. Ask what they learned about themselves. Too often, we respond when something seems “wrong” and pay it more heed than when something is right or even neutral. Take time to catch your kid being a rockstar, and celebrate.
As with all of these blogs, this is for educational purposes only. Ideas discussed in this blog do not constitute therapy and are not a fit for every family’s situation. If you or a loved one are struggling with a particularly anxious child that gets a real flare up this time of year or beyond it, you can always reach out for help. There are many therapists trained in supportive parenting for anxious childhood emotions or SPACE, which is specifically geared toward helping parents create an environment in which their child can be confident and competent.
For all of us, let this be a reminder that bravery means doing something while scared. Who knows. Maybe next year your child will ask for a Slender Man costume.
