I’m not a parent, but going by pop culture, it seems like literally every child has the same fears.
In pre-modern times, I imagine that they’d be sleeping in the same room as the parents, but if modern notions of privacy don’t permit that, seems we could at least design an enclosed capsule or something.
We did for my daughter. She then got scared of door knobs because they “had eyes”. They find something else lol
My 1st thought is that we may need these minor fears to learn how to deal with fear itself and as part of developmemt they’ll likely just be a fraid of something different instead.
If we eliminate the children, then children’s rooms would simply just be rooms
The root of all evils …
Edit: I am a fathe of two
Are your kids evil?
You don’t have kids do you
Maybe we don’t need to round every sharp corner we can find. I doubt anyone is traumatized for life because there was a closet in the room as a child.
Eliminate closets?
Anyway no, not every child has these fears. Mine don’t. They sleep in pitch darkness and have never complained.
But you deal with a lot of weird fears and hang ups with kids. Not by accommodating them but by helping the kid grow out of them.
One of the ways one can grow out of a fear is by accommodating it enough in a passive way that it’s forgotten about. Lighting up the back of a closet or under a bed for even a couple of months with a battery-powered nightlight (if there is no outlet available) could easily be enough for a kid to overcome it. Not in every situation, of course, but I think in enough that it could be worth a try.
I do agree that changing the entire space like that is too much though.
It is an opportunity to bind with your child. Make them face their fears playfully. Probably will strenghten its braverity.
Also, any matress needs air circulation beneath below it. Otherwise it will get warm, stinky and very dirty.
There are a lot of bed frames that are solid, though, including the one I use at home. If it causes any ill effects on the mattress I haven’t observed it personally.
Nonnative tounge - I meant below grabsthetoolbox
Not a psychologist or anything but isnt it healthy for a child to overcome a fear and not just avoid it
Also not a psychologist, but I would say that’s only true if the fear keeps them from enjoying life
As adults, we design our living spaces to be comfortable to us. We don’t intentionally make them scary so we can overcome.
Speak for yourself. My home is entirely sharp angles and unsecured towers of broken glass and rubbing alcohol suspended in petroleum jelly that also slicks the floor. I will brook no weakness in my home.
Who intended for the closet to be a scary void?
Same dude who put a bucket of truth outside the master bathroom
The people who think not having it be one means children are avoiding rather than overcoming their fears
It may not have been intended as such originally, but if you defend the design on that basis, it becomes intentional.
I think fear is an important part of our development, and sanitizing children’s upbringings is rarely the best approach. I love when my child communicates that they’re afraid of something because that gives me an opportunity to guide them through how to encounter and process that fear, and how to continue functioning in life when fear is present (which is always for a lot of people).
Also, for kids who are scared of their closet or under their bed at night, if you remove those triggers I would be surprised if other triggers did not arise. It could easily turn into a never ending game of whack a mole.
“Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’ ‘That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.”
I was afraid that I’d die in my sleep. Not like from health issues. Monsters or something unknown that only existed when I was alone in the dark. To a later age than I’d prefer to share.
Fuck, all right, I got over it last week. /s but the rest was true.
I wasn’t afraid of my closet, I was afraid of stretching my legs out towards the end of the bed, because claw monsters might get them.
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Similar goes for picky eating. Few things are tasty by default, but most tastes are acquired by repeated exposure to new cuisine.
I’m still getting used to clams, snails, slugs, and calamari. Went from gag reflex and unable to swallow to capable of eating but not savouring in a few months time.
And again with fears, it’s not that dark voids have become less dangerous or fearful, it’s just that I have checked enough voids to not be immediately alarmed.
Let’s put a void in every dark corner. I’m never scared with cats around.
Having cats around makes random noises much less scary.
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I don’t have kids, but the way I was raised is by letting me experiment with stuff. My parents would let me bump my head or get my fingers stuck into stuff, because then I would learn to not put my fingers into random stuff. Now of course they told me don’t do it but they didn’t prevent me from learning from my mistakes. And look at that: I’m not dead yet and I don’t run in places with things hanging off the ceiling!
And they also did that for fears, the kid needs to overcome their fears the same way they learn from their mistakes, by doing it themselves.
Kind of unrelated one thing my mom told me she did with me and my brother was for example when we fell off our bicycles, instead of running and crying and acting all shocked and scared, she would just say “Wow! That was a COOL fall! You were so badass with all the dust going everywhere!!” And that would prevent us from crying and making a whole case about it. She told me that kids will cry when they feel like it will bring them attention, especially if they are not badly/truly hurt
That’s great that it worked for you, but I won’t be doing that with my kids. Statistically, there was always the chance you lose a finger or hand from sticking it where it didn’t belong. And while yes, it’s unlikely, it doesn’t really matter anymore how likely it is once it actually happens.
Well I mean they wouldn’t let me kill myself or let me lose a part of myself, what I mean is they let me experiment by letting me use a real knife to cut fruit etc, and I did cut my fingers once and I’ve been very careful ever since, but they would never let me play with the knife so I didn’t swallow it for example
I think for some children that’s the best way to overcome fear. Not for all children, though, people are built different.
