Children’s Fears and Worries … by Kyle D. Pruett, M.D.

Kyle D. Pruett, M.D. is an advisor for The Goddard School. He is an authority on child development and has been practicing child and family psychiatry for over 25 years.


As a (former) pediatrician and child psychiatrist for three decades, I increasingly respect the significance of children’s fears in shaping our shared everyday lives. Inconvenient though fears of the dark, animals, water, and monsters may be, they are meaningful clues about what children are trying to master about their world.

Worries all mean something, and we let our children down when we ignore and belittle, not to mention waste opportunities to master, so let’s spend a minute to understand them better:

• Fears appear like clockwork in childhood. The adrenalin fears stimulate heightens learning of vital lessons, like when to run in the face of real danger, when to cry for help, and eventually to distinguish what is really dangerous (speeding cars) from what is not (family dog).


• Fears only seem to emerge ‘from nowhere’. Actually, they typically surface during periods of accelerated development – when children lose their old equilibrium while looking for a new one. Actively toilet-learning toddlers are often more afraid of the dark before or after they get the potty thing solved.

• Stranger anxiety begins when children start to crawl around and need to be more aware of who knows them and who doesn’t.

• Other common fears which emerge and fade with predictability during preschool years may be insects, animals, loud noises, the dark (and its imagined inhabitants – monsters, witches, ghosts), high places, and parental loss to name a few.


Listen thoughtfully to your children as they describe their fear. Their fears have their reasons, though they may not be instantly clear to you. Reassure your children that you’ll help them feel better – get your flashlight out and check under their bed. Cuddle them a little extra during such times, and let them slip back toward babyhood a little. Finally, when children work it out, remind them that they worked it out. This will help them as new fears emerge.

Suggested resource: American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: www.aacap.org