Childhood fears

What does not kill you makes you weaker

Fear does not need to be a normal part of childhood. There could and ideally should be a childhood without fear. This is an almost impossible goal to attain because of what children are bound to see and hear around them. We should however strive to provide our children with as much a sense of security as we can during their childhood years.

There were times when the instillment of fear in children's minds was used by adults as an aid of controlling their behavior. I can think of no other reason for the existence of some classic children's fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and similar horrors. It’s easier to make children do what you want them to do if you can make them believe that there is a witch, a bad animal, or another fearsome creature ready to take them away if they do not. This may have been exploited by children's caretakers, such as nannies, teachers, guardians or parents, to help them control children. It may be important to look at the question to what extent such practices are connected with historical phenomena such as witch-hunting, xenophobia, and other irrational hatreds. Perhaps planting irrational fears in children's minds early on, at a time when they are unable to assess them critically, has something to do with them growing up searching for the objects of those early fears.

Unfortunately many parents today unwittingly continue this malpractice by continuing to make such stories part of their children's lives, without realizing the psychological damage this may cause. These fairy tales have become such an integral part of the collective consciousness of our culture that many parents feel it has to be an integral part of a wholesome education. But the practice of scaring little kids is not limited to old fairy tales; it has sustained itself as a major trend in contemporary children literature and entertainment. Most G rated movies aimed at children are not fit to be watched by anyone under the age of 13 and in many cases not even that. People would do anything to prevent a little child from seeing the naked human body, but would happily allow them to watch movies that would cause any healthy child nightmares. The same is true for a great part of children's literature, including what is considered good literature. And I haven’t even mentioned video-games.

The biological purpose of fear is to provide us with immediate extra strength in the face of danger, so that we can flee or fight better. It does this by releasing certain chemicals into our system. It is, or at least used to be, a useful thing in the face of a real danger. It is probably harmful both psychologically and physically in situations where the danger is not real and fleeing does not make sense. Psychologically, because these fears do not have any rational outlet. The vast majorities of these dangers and fears are irrational - they simply do not exist in the way they are being depicted. Physically, because these chemicals released into our system have no physical outlet. Instead of spending them through some physically demanding activity such as fast running, which is the way it was meant by nature, we continue to sit on some couch and eat potato chips. It’s also possible that such irrational fears end up causing some kind of life-long addiction on both the physical and psychological level, which may help explain the bizarre appetite for the horror genre.

Childhood should be as protected as possible, almost sacredly so. We may call this ‘the Buddha principle’. The rationale for this Buddha principle could be explained by the gap which exists in childhood between emotional and cognitive development. In general, emotions are an earlier evolutionary development than the cognitive system; the later cognitive system sits on top of the earlier emotional system, interacts with it and has some role in shaping those emotions. The mental development of children mimics to some degree that chronological order of evolutionary development, that is, the emotional system seems to develop and mature earlier than their cognitive system. 

When children encounter an unrealistic fearful object, they cannot as yet assess it in the same way that adults do because their cognitive system is not yet fully developed. The same encounter would have a much smaller imprint on the adult mind because it would be filtered through the adult cognitive system; although one can argue that the imprint on the adult subconscious does not go through this cognitive filter and thus could be much more consequential even for adults. Its effect and imprint on the emotional system and emotional memory of the child is stronger than it should be, because the child does not as yet possess a mature cognitive filter. That irrational emotional imprint may be very difficult, if not impossible, to erase, correct or retroactively reshape later on when the cognitive system finally matures. These irrational fears that are planted in childhood therefore persist within the emotional system and emotional memory into adulthood and are not so amenable to later cognitive correction. 

Childhood is the foundation on which everything else is built, and we want it to be as strong and wholesome as possible. There will be plenty of opportunities later on in life for disturbing encounters which are real enough. There is no need to introduce even those real ones, let alone imaginary ones, into the foundations.