Night
terrors and bad dreams are common among young children, and a new study found
that that some preschoolers who suffer from nighttime phobias have difficulty
telling the difference between fantasy and reality.
Children
are often said to be more sensitive, or “open,” to psychic and paranormal
experiences. The idea is that there is wisdom in the ignorance and inexperience
of youth and that adults rarely see entities or have such experiences because
their minds have been closed off by logic and skepticism to the magic and
wonder of the world. Or, to use another analogy, it’s like in Warner
Bros. cartoons when Wile E. Coyote or Elmer Fudd walks off a cliff but
doesn’t fall until they are told that they’re not on land.
Why
Children See Ghosts
The trope
of supernaturally-sensitive children is staple of countless depictions in the
media and popular culture. Ghosts and monsters usually make their presence
known to young children. We see this in countless horror films such as “The
Exorcist” (demons possess a young girl); “Poltergeist” (evil spirits contact a
young girl through television static, causing her to famously announce their
arrival with the creepy sing-song phrase “They’re heeere!”); and the film
“Mama,” currently in theaters, which features two young sisters who communicate
with an evil ghost the adults don’t see.
Real
children reporting ghostly experiences (often at night) were also a staple of
the popular, long-running television show “Unsolved Mysteries.” Though some
parents were initially skeptical, they soon came to believe that their child’s
accounts of seeing and interacting with ghosts and monsters were real and not
merely imagination. “Why would a child make up something like that?” they often
ask.
Of course
children make up stories for any number of reasons, including seeking attention
and avoiding punishment, and often for no reason at all. But new research
suggests that some kids think their nightmares are
completely real.
When a
genuinely terrified and wide-awake child tells his mother or father that she
saw a scary, shadowy man outside her door or window, there’s a good chance that
they might take it seriously, especially if they are among the nearly 40
percent of Americans who believe in haunted houses. This, of course, only feeds
and reinforces the child’s fears.
Seeing
Monsters
A
new study may
help explain why some kids report seeing imaginary monsters in real life.
It
involved 80 children between four and six who experienced severe nighttime
fears and compared them to 32 children who did not. The researchers assessed
the children’s fears, using reports from both the kids and their parents.
Children viewed images of imaginary figures (such as fairies or Bob the
Builder) and were asked whether they could occur in real life, for example,
could they go visit a fairy in person. The study found that children with
nighttime fears demonstrated more fantasy-reality confusion than the control
group (those without fears) and those fears were more dramatic in the younger
children.
The more
children understood the difference between fantasy and reality, the less
fearful they were.
The study
also found “that children with nighttime fears suffer from higher levels of
general fears and more behavior problems… thus suggesting that nighttime fears
may reflect a broader vulnerability to general fears, anxiety and internalizing
disorders” and that “a less developed ability to distinguish fantasy from
reality may contribute to the emergence and persistence of children’s fears… .
Children’s uncertainty regarding the existence of magical entities such as
witches, ghosts and monsters may generate and maintain fears of these
creatures.”
The
study, “Nighttime
Fears and Fantasy–Reality Differentiation in Preschool Children,”conducted
by researchers Tamar Zisenwine, Michal Kaplan, Jonathan Kushnir,
and Avi Sadeh, appears in the February 2013 Child Psychiatry & Human
Development journal.
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