How to help a child stop being scared of animals?

March 25, 2015 3:43 PM

My daughter (5.5yo) is scared of animals - dogs in particular. If any come close to her, let alone touch her, she starts wailing and crying and runs away.

She's grown up with cats and will tolerate them (will stroke them unbidden), but gets upset if they jump on her bed or (sometimes) come close to her.

Dogs seem to almost freak her out. For example, she wants nothing to do with my parent's mini fox terrier puppies - they're the gentlest of dogs, but she won't pat them even when they're asleep.

Other animals she shows academic interest in, and will happily look at through a fence/etc, but will. not. touch.

Other information:
- she's 5.5, and generally outgoing and confident
- never been bitten by any animal, barely even swatted by the cats (and even then no claws)
- she does have a tendency towards drama queenery - there are no increments between "happy" and "drama", it's a binary operation (and always has been).
- her almost-3 sister shows none of these concerns, and will happily walk up to large dogs and stick her face in their mouth that's another issue

posted by coriolisdave to Human Relations (19 answers total)

I don't think you're going to be able to convince her to love animals at this stage. Besides, a love of pets and animals in general tends to come later.

However, perhaps you could explain that by wailing and crying (and making physical gestures) she is scaring the animals. The best course of action would be for her to ignore them so that they are not scared and she is not scared.

Then, just try and ignore it yourself, don't force her. If she sees you and her sister getting enjoyment from the puppies then perhaps she'll venture over on her own.

Be careful with the safety speech though as you don't want to make it seem that she could spook an animal into attacking her. You know how best to explain it in a way she can understand.
posted by Youremyworld at 3:53 PM on March 25, 2015 [12 favorites]

I was very much like your daughter when I was little (just with dogs, not with other animals). Even little tiny dogs scared me to the point that I'd make my dad pick me up so they couldn't get at me. When I was about seven or so, we went to stay with my cousins in Wyoming for a week or two, and I was pretty scared, because they had a big sheepdog mix kind of a thing. I remember my mom saying something like, "Oh, you'll be fine, he's a NICE dog," and sure enough, he and I became best friends, and from then on, I have loved dogs.

I know this isn't advice, per se, but it is a thing that kids can totally just grow out of.
posted by infinitywaltz at 4:11 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

My very young cousin was deathly afraid of a my neighbor's dog who used to be around us all the time. The dog had no interest in him, but just being in the room with it he would wail and scream and cry and his mother babied him a little too much in general. He was too big to be carried, but his mom would all the time. So instead of trying to help him get over his fear she would 'rescue' him each time and call the puppy a "bad dog" for being around her son and scaring him.

One day my aunt was out, so I took advantage of this by giving the kid a little tough love that I felt was for his own good. I was a teenager so I didn't have any qualms about going against his mom's wishes back then. He was in a room playing and I snuck the dog into the room without him noticing and shut the door. From there I proceeded to interact with the dog, but FAR away from the child all the way on the other side of the room. When my cousin saw he was startled and began to wail and cry. I ignored it completely and just continued to interact with the dog. After what seemed like 10 minutes of wailing, he realized his mommy wasn't going to pick him up and he began to be less afraid and more curious. He was still scared, but not as much as before as he watched me and the dog interact. Unfortunately his mother came in at that point and upon seeing her he stopped being curious and began to wail and cry again for his mother to rescue him. She picked him up to get him away from the "bad dog" and scolded me for what I did. However, after that tough love lesson he was never as afraid of the dog as much as he was before. I felt that if I had allowed to continue with it, he would've potentially gotten over his fear completely and much sooner by the second time- in which I would've moved the dog closer to my cousin, etc but at least he got over a good portion of his fear with that one time. He even asked his mom to carry him closer to the dog the next time he came over.

If there is a calm and obedient dog that you have access to you can try something like this to see if it works for you too.
posted by rancher at 4:22 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

I was scared of dogs when I was young*. It began to get much better after I heard that dogs can tell if you're afraid and are more likely to attack - or lick - the scared person. I remember someone saying that you had to be truly calm and unafraid internally, because the dog would know if you were just faking. So I practiced that, and it seemed to work. I think I was older than five at the time I got that message, like 8 or 9. But I think a five year old could understand the basic idea. Now I'm fine around dogs, not exactly thrilled to be with them but happy to talk to or pet dogs whose owners I trust.

*I was scared of them because twice, big mean scary loud dogs had chased me down the street, once biting someone I was with. I'd also seen otherwise friendly dogs get excited and bite people who were just trying to play. So I actually think your daughter is quite smart. Yes, it's important that this fear doesn't end up controlling her life because dogs are everywhere, but if she never loves or wants to touch dogs, that's fine. Better to have the attitude of "that dog can chill over there, and I will chill separately over here" than "OOH DOG I DON'T KNOW LET ME TOUCH IT." That probably goes for other animals, too. I mean I love cats and my impulse is to try to stick my face in every cat I see, but I've known enough cats to know that's not always a good plan. So I guess I'm saying, just try to get her to the indifferent stage before the affectionate animal-lover stage.
posted by DestinationUnknown at 4:55 PM on March 25, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is a super weird age. Our daughter is pretty brave, has always been pretty brave, but at 5 1/2 started to act super weird around darkness and being alone.

7 is sometimes called the age of Reason. There are a lot of things happening developmentally and the keys are 1) stuff dies and then it's gone and 2) that means me and my family. So there's this internal argument about fake monsters and real monsters.

I'm sure there's a wealth of experimentation left and right but what we're doing is allowing our daughter to climb into our bed at night and hide. She's been doing this since October. I've got an AskMe locked and readied. It's the pits.

I'm saying this because maybe stop thinking 'dogs'. Our daughter has zero fear about dogs--less than she probably should have--but she is exploring this world of light and darkness and it's highly complicated. 'Dogs' are a metaphor. She told me about how one of the scariest things was how she'd look into the hallway and see light, and beyond that, darkness.

This is super complicated territory and while it's totally reasonable to consider 'animal phobia' it is also worth considering the moment in your life when you start to consider death, mortality, flesh. Dogs in many ways represent this.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 5:47 PM on March 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

My 12-year-old daughter is very afraid of dogs, and has become more afraid of them over the years. It has become an intense phobia. She's a calm, articulate, clever kid who doesn't get upset about much. But she will freak. out. around any dog. Never been bitten or on the receiving end of aggression from a dog. Both my husband and I grew up with dogs (although we don't have any as adults) and we're generally chill and not anxious or worried about dogs.

What is strange about it is that she got to be OK with my in-laws' dogs (golden retrievers) when she spent the summer with them - she even got to the point where she would hold the leash on walks with them. The dogs have passed on though, and she hasn't had a lot of similar positive experiences with dogs. I think her comfort was a direct result of my father-in-law's efforts, who is AMAZING with animals and was able to really create a safe space for her to experience being with dogs.

A year or so ago a well-meaning mom forced her to spend time with their small, friendly dog at a sleepover (unbeknownst to me until after I picked her up) and it was a very upsetting and traumatizing experience. There was also ridicule from other kids in the house about her fear of dogs. Her fear intensified after that, and I think it is now wrapped up with the humiliating, boundary-crossing clusterfuck of that sleepover.

In general, we do give a heads up to people she is visiting for an afternoon or a day that she's afraid of dogs, and that it is better to keep the dog(s) away from her. We do this not because we overprotective and coddling, but because she will cry and be terrified, no one will have a good time, and some random friend's mom is actually not the right person to try to solve this problem. Interestingly, people usually ask about it before I volunteer any information. I think they're trying to be proactive about allergies rather than fear, but it indicates that dogs are a problem for a lot of people, for a variety of reasons.

I wanted to offer a counterpoint to the chorus of "don't coddle and everything will be fine." Fears can be complicated, and it is OK and appropriate to enforce boundaries that ensure that you and the people you trust are the ones in control of situations where your daughter is introduced to dogs. I agree with modeling calmness and acceptance around dogs, and that she's likely to grow out of it, but don't let dog-lovers think they can "fix" her by random exposure.
posted by jeoc at 5:48 PM on March 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

Remember, the parents who are most likely to try the exposure method are the ones who already have less fearful kids. If your kid freaks the fuck out over a purse chihuahua, you are going to be a "coddling" parent. Your "overprotectiveness" is a response to the kid's terror, not the cause of it.

I had a kid who, at age 5.5, also had no increments between "happy" and "drama." Yeah, my inlaws thought I was overprotective -- and were not shy about expressing this -- but despite my coddling he outgrew his various anxieties and is a well-adjusted 12 yr old. Trust your instincts about your particular kid. They are not giving out prizes for petting dogs at age 6 instead of age 10.
posted by selfmedicating at 6:03 PM on March 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

I wasn't ever really scared of animals (my size or smaller, not bugs), but I was scared of seemingly everything else for basically my whole childhood. The thing that my parents did that helped me the most other than modeling calm behavior and giving me safe space to freak out was, for particular fears, showing me lots of safe non-fiction movies of those things. For my fear of clowns there was a vhs of behind the scenes at a circus that had a clown putting on his makeup that I practically wore out. For water it was many clips of travel shows (the Michael Palin Around the World in 80 Days one in particular) with people on boats and going swimming happily. For night time it was parts of the original Cosmos about the stars. This did a lot of important things for me. It was a special treat to watch these movies so I learned to associate thinking about these things with a reward. I learned how to teach myself out of a fear of something with educating myself about it. I had lots of safe exposure to the scary thing in a place where I had complete control over it because my parents always gave me the remote and I knew how to pause and turn off the tv. I learned how to say no, and how to gauge my own anxiety and see if I could handle the scary thing that day. And actually I learned a lot of science!

My parents were lucky because they were friends with AV nerds who made these tapes for me. It would be a lot easier these days, because you can just assemble videos in a playlist online. There are lots of videos of puppies. I suggest Animal Planet's "Too Cute" series for a lot of completely safe, friendly, non-scary visual exposure to puppies and kittens (and sometimes other animals.) I think a lot of the fear of animals is their unpredictability. If your kid can see a wider array of their behavior in a way that she know she's totally safe, she'll have more data to predict things from in her rapidly-developing kid brain.
posted by Mizu at 6:33 PM on March 25, 2015 [6 favorites]

If this is something you actually want to deal with in some way other than waiting for her to grow out of it, you could look into exposing her to therapy dogs.

Therapy dogs are trained to be super calm and approachable.
posted by brookeb at 7:47 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

The fact that she's not all that wild about cats and other animals too leads me to believe this is just how she's wired. She will grow out of it or not, and all you can do is help her learn to behave calmly around animals, for her own safety. That fear is coming from down in her lizard brain and it's no less rational than a fear of heights. You see how different your other girl is, right? This is not about your parenting. Just teach her to manage the situations she may find herself in and leave her alone.
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:36 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Has she seen many examples or imagery of BABY animals? Maybe you could spend some time looking at cute YouTube videos of puppies. Then arrange to spend some actual time together with puppies. She's old enough to make a connection between sweet/harmless/dopey puppy and sweet/harmless/dopey dog. You could also use it as an opportunity to talk about how there are different types of dogs, and that some she might feel more comfortable avoiding -- like dogs who are barking, dogs with a particular breed characteristic, etc. If you have friends who have a really obedient, passive and wonderfully behaved dog, you could arrange some short encounters as a sort of "graduation" from her triumph over her fears.
posted by cior at 9:38 PM on March 25, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, talk about her behaviours because the thing is - dogs are fucking deadly, right. My daughter, similar age, tries SO hard not to be terrified of dogs but any time she makes any sort of progress some asshole comes in with 'exposure therapy' with a dog that is big enough to bowl her over with their tail, or a yappy little loud thing, or something like that, while telling her not to be a sook and the dog is fine. They aren't fine - they are exhibiting behaviours that she knows and experiences as threatening. She almost refused to go to a beloved aunty's house because she has a dog, but we talked to her about behaviours and about how they deal with the dog and it makes a difference. She's still nervous but she has a plan that the adults have all agreed on and that she trusts they will fulfil.

Pay attention too, to the way people act towards and around the dogs. Is there a lot of yelling about barking, about jumping? That sort of environment can predispose a kid to having an anxiety driven response, even without a bite on her.
posted by geek anachronism at 12:31 AM on March 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Not sure if your daughter is into Sesame Street, but they did an episode ("Afraid of the Bark" - s43e10) that dealt specifically with this. Abbie is scared of Barkley, so they talk a lot about ways she can get over that fear; they do it realistically, though, and don't send the message that dogs are always safe...they talk about how to approach dogs, for example, and when it's OK to do so vs. when it's not. FWIW, my daughter has also recently shown some of the same fears, and watching/talking about this episode with her seemed to help.
posted by richmondparker at 4:59 AM on March 26, 2015

I was like this around that age, and older. Absolutely terrified of dogs. Crossing the street to get away from a dog terrified of dogs. Just dogs, not any other animal. I have grown up to be ...tolerant of dogs, and even appreciative of their cuteness if they are at a distance from me and aren't jumping on me. Nthing that she will likely grow out of the terror phase, but maybe she's just not a dog person. Dogs are confusing to people who aren't wired to understand their sudden movements and big tonguey mouths. I was also hesitant around cats when I was little, and then I grew up into a full-blown cat-adorer, so maybe that wonderful thing will happen to your daughter too.
posted by millipede at 6:52 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Since you mention the drama stuff, I will tell you about my daughter. She would go from happy to tears at the drop of a hat and cried and sobbed over every tiny scratch like it was a broken arm. At a somewhat younger age, maybe 3 and a half or so, I put her on a pain scale. 1 to 10, with 10 as the worst. And with the promise that she would still get plenty of TLC regardless.

So, the first time I tried it, she was sobbing and wailing like crazy about some tiny nick and I asked her for a number for how bad it was and she sobbed, "Its a THREE!!" OK, TLC,TLC, and if it is a three, "then why are you crying like its an 8?" "Because I'm sensitive!" she wailed. TLC TLC. But it helped us to talk about it and helped her to get some perspective on her feelings and over time she settled down and could tell me calmly just exactly what was going on and what she really needed.

Sp there's that, for what its worth.
posted by SLC Mom at 5:55 PM on March 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for all the ideas guys.. will try a few things and, hopefully, with time she'll get there.
posted by coriolisdave at 6:37 PM on March 26, 2015

The hero in this story could be a guinea pig. There is nothing slower, cuter or less threatening. I remember seeing a show about animal phobias in children and they began exposure therapy with a guinea pig. Does your daughter have any friends with little pets?
posted by cranberrymonger at 9:36 PM on March 28, 2015

My daughter is terrified of guinea pigs - anything small and skittering terrifies her which includes all small dogs and guinea pigs and some cats. So it might not work...
posted by geek anachronism at 2:30 PM on March 29, 2015

Response by poster: By way of a quick update, I had a chat with my daughter before my parents visited last night, covering off how the puppies respond to her behaviour. It seemed to help - she didn't freak out, was still a bit nervous but actually consented to patting them occasionally.

And would happily watch them gambol about, too. Partial success!
posted by coriolisdave at 10:33 PM on March 29, 2015