Nighttime fears in children😯
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Nighttime fears in evolutionary and cross-cultural perspective -
In a study of Dutch children, over 73% of kids aged 4-12 years said they experienced fear at night (Muris et al 2001).
Another study of Australian children reported that over 64% of kids between 8 and 16 admitted to nighttime anxieties or fears (Gordon et al 2007).
In both cases, many parents were unaware of their children's problems.
Why do so many of these kids report nighttime fears? And why are some parents out of touch?
Perhaps the answer is related to the practice of solitary sleep.
In most places around the world, young children sleep with other people. But in some Western countries, children are expected to sleep by themselves.
Does solitary sleep make children more fearful? It would be surprising if co-sleeping with parents didn’t reduce a child’s separation anxiety -- a panic response arising from a primitive part of brain that also processes information about physical pain (Panskepp 2000).
And it makes sense that kids might find nocturnal separation to be especially distressing.
For over 99% of human history, our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers. Among these ancestors, children left alone at night would have been extremely vulnerable to predation. Leaving a child alone at night meant abandonment and (very possibly) death. Fear evolved to keep kids close and safe.
Few modern kids have to worry about getting attacked by predators. But the tendency to be fearful remains, and some young children have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. These kids may have more nighttime fears as a result (Zisenwine 2012), and sleeping alone might make things worse.
In a study tracking over 900 Quebecois children from the age of two, Valérie Simard and her colleagues found that toddlers who slept in their mothers' beds were less likely to suffer from nightmares in later years (Simard et al 2008).
The correlation is suggestive, but not conclusive. Maybe kids who co-sleep have other advantages that reduce the risk of nightmares.
But one thing seems clear: Whether your child sleeps along or with family members, nighttime fears and anxieties should be taken seriously.
Although the kids in the Australian study were selected from the general population (as opposed to a psychiatric practice or sleep clinic), researchers discovered that about 10% of children complaining of nighttime fears fit the criteria for an anxiety disorder.
And the study by Simard and colleagues reports strong links between anxiety and bad dreams. Seventeen-month-old kids who were rated by their mothers as anxious, difficult, or emotionally disturbed were more likely than other children to have bad dreams at 29 months
Why kids need help coping with nighttime fear ?
If this is the adult experience, what must it be like for a child who lacks the mature coping skills of an adult?
To deal successfully with nighttime fears and separation anxiety, a child needs
- A well-developed sense of time (“when will I see Mommy again?”)
- The ability to control emotional impulses
- The ability to distinguish appearances from reality
- The ability to reason consciously and trust rational conclusions over misleading sensory information (“that shadowy bump on the floor might look like a monster, but I know it’s really a pile of clothes”)
Most kids don’t develop these capacities until they are 5-6 years old—not coincidentally the age when the frontal lobes start to mature (Eliot 2000). The brain’s frontal lobes permit us to reason, problem-solve, and plan ahead. They also help us decide what to do with the raw emotions we feel.
Mind blowing
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