Everyone, from the youngest child to the oldest adult, experiences anxieties and fears at one time or another. Feeling anxious in a particularly uncomfortable situation never feels very good. However, with children, such feelings are not only normal, they are also necessary. Experiencing and dealing with anxieties can prepare young people to handle the unsettling experiences and challenging situations of life. Read on to understand the differences between anxieties, fears, and phobias, and how you can help your child deal with them.

Anxieties and Fears Are Normal

Anxiety is defined as "apprehension without apparent cause." It usually occurs when there is no immediate threat to a person's safety or well being, but the threat feels real. Anxiety makes a person want to escape the situation - fast. His heart beats quickly, he may begin to perspire, and "butterflies" in the stomach soon follow. "However," says Katharina Manassis, MD, author of Keys to Parenting Your Anxious Child, "as uncomfortable as it feels, a little bit of anxiety can actually make people perform better because it keeps them alert and focused on what they have to do." Having fears or anxieties about certain things can be helpful too because it makes kids behave in a safe way. For example, a kid with a fear of fire would avoid playing with matches.

The nature of anxieties and fears change as children grow and develop:

*Babies experience stranger anxiety, clinging to parents when confronted by people they don't recognize.

*Toddlers around 10 to 18 months experience separation anxiety, becoming emotionally distressed when one or both parents leave.

*Children ages 2 through 6 have anxiety about things that are not based in reality such as fears of monsters and ghosts.

*Kids ages 7 through 12 often have fears that reflect real circumstances that may happen to them, such as bodily injury and natural disaster.

As a child grows, one fear may disappear or replace another; a child who couldn't sleep with the light off at age 5 may enjoy a ghost story at a slumber party years later. And some fears may extend only to one particular kind of stimulus, as in the example of the child who wants to pet a lion at the zoo but wouldn't dream of going near the neighbor's dog.

Updated and reviewed by: Kim Rutherford, MD
Date reviewed: September 2001
Originally reviewed by: Steve Dowshen, MD, and Richard Kingsley, MD