From the author: Odentsov V.M. // School psychologist. Everything for robots. - 2011. - No. 4 In my practice, I often encounter children's fears; Both parents and children themselves, and often attentive teachers, turn for help. Fear is an affective (emotionally acute) reflection in a person’s mind of a specific threat to his life and well-being; Anxiety is an emotionally acute sense of an upcoming threat. Anxiety, unlike fear, is not always a negatively perceived feeling, since it is also possible in the form of joyful excitement, exciting expectations. An emotionally dysfunctional child, depending on the mental structure of the individual, life experience, relationships with parents and peers, may experience both anxiety and fear. A state of unaccountable, vague anxiety gives rise to anxiety, fear of certain objects or thoughts - a feeling of fear. The unifying principle for fear and anxiety is a feeling of anxiety. It manifests itself in the fact that the child gets lost when asked, does not find the right words to answer the question, speaks in a trembling voice and often falls completely silent. Everything inside becomes cold, the body “fills with lead”, there is a ache in the heart area, the palms become wet. He may make many unnecessary movements or, conversely, become motionless and constrained. Such symptoms indicate overstrain of the psychophysiological functions of the body. Fears can be age-related and neurotic. Age-related fears are noted in emotionally sensitive children as a reflection of the characteristics of their mental and personal development. They arise, as a rule, under the influence of the following factors: 1) the presence of fears among parents; 2) anxiety in relationships with the child; 3) excessive protection of him from dangers and isolation from communication with peers; 4) a large number of prohibitions on the part of the same parent gender or complete provision of freedom to a child by a parent of the other gender; 5) numerous unrealized threats from all adults in the family; 6) lack of opportunity for role identification with a parent of the same gender, mainly in boys; 7) conflictual relationships between parents; 8) mental trauma such as fear ;9) psychological infection by fears in the process of communicating with peers and adults. Neurotic fears are characterized by greater emotional intensity and tension; long-term or persistent; unfavorable influence on the formation of character and personality; relationship with other neurotic disorders and experiences; avoidance of the object of fear, as well as everything new and unknown; the relative difficulty of eliminating fears. Neurotic fears can be the result of long-term and unresolved experiences. More often, sensitive children experiencing emotional difficulties in relationships with their parents, whose self-image is distorted by emotional experiences in the family or conflicts, are afraid in this way. These children cannot rely on adults as a source of security, authority and love. Sometimes fears are difficult to eliminate, since the impact on the child’s condition from adults is only external, without taking into account the nature, meaning and significance. More effective will be the impact on the cause of fear, the conditions and circumstances that give rise to it. Children’s fears are diverse and depend on various factors, among which several of the most significant can be identified. Family relationships: the more balanced the relationship, the less prone the child is to any fears; and vice versa, an anxious child directly indicates the dysfunction of intra-family relationships, the possible neuroticism of one (or several) immediate relatives, and also, possibly, the presence of emotional unconscious rejection from the parent(s) or physical violence; Situational fears, mental trauma: for example , the child is frightened by the “scary aunt in a headscarf”, a big dog, a car, the possibility of being placed inhospital, etc. It is sometimes not easy to determine the triggering situation, but in this case the child develops reactive anxiety, which is easier to treat. A sign of this particular nature of fear is that a real situation took place and it, to one degree or another, actually affected the child. The presence of potentially dangerous situations: the child’s fantasy stops at one or more options for the development of events that did not actually happen, but could (could) would) happen. Most often, anxiety occurs when children: are afraid of their parents’ divorce; afraid of being lost; afraid that something will happen to their parents or that their mother will leave, fall out of love, or forget; receive information that cannot be adequately processed, but penetrates deeply into memory child (the sources of this information can be conversations of parents, random remarks heard in transport or on the street, television programs, disaster films, thrillers, etc.); they are afraid of being subjected to violence from strangers (thieves, bandits). The presence of parental (family) ) problems if they are transferred to children: the child explicitly or implicitly becomes the arena of psychological struggle between adults, which leads to the development of anxiety.5. Inadequacy of the requirements placed on the child, his age and level of development: the child begins to be afraid of mistakes, of any actions in general, and feels constantly unable to “meet up.” In young children, these sensations are in a very vague, practically non-verbalized state and can be expressed indirectly - in drawings, habits, etc. Distortion of a child’s personality by parenting style: first of all, this is the predominance of overprotection or indifference. At the same time, an apparently prosperous, healthy child may experience floating, non-situational anxiety, the reason for which most often lies in the child’s unpreparedness to solve age-appropriate tasks. Often such anxiety takes the form of laziness, indifference, and disorganization. It should be taken into account that the destructiveness of the parenting style is not always recognized by the parents. Certain mental properties of the child (increased sensitivity, psychasthenicity, etc.) or the presence of certain abilities. For example, the rapid development of intelligence often gives the child a variety of options for resolving situations, including frightening ones; in addition, more intelligent children begin to experience existential fears (fear of death, fear of suicide, etc.) earlier; Moreover, these fears can already arise in preschoolers. Fears of this kind are difficult to diagnose and correct; they are often difficult to differentiate from psychopathic development. Somatic and psychopathic disorders: the child becomes anxious due to constant anticipation of an attack (for example, epilepsy) or anxiety is associated with psychopathic symptoms (hallucinations, etc. ). In this case, correction should be carried out in close contact with a doctor and a psychiatrist. Success is not the success of resolving age-related crises: anxiety in this case is born of a discrepancy between the methods of response mastered and those necessary for the child in various situations. Outwardly, such a child usually seems more infantile, sometimes fearful, while maintaining a normal level of development of cognitive processes. Modern psychology divides 29 fears into the following types: obsessive fears; delusional fears; overvalued fears. Obsessive fears include: hypsophobia (fear of heights), claustrophobia (fear of closed spaces), agoraphobia (fear of open spaces), sitophobia (fear of eating), etc. There are hundreds and thousands of obsessive childhood fears; It is certainly impossible to list everything. The child experiences these fears in certain, specific situations, and is afraid of the circumstances that may entail them. Delusional fears are fears for which it is simply impossible to find the cause. How, for example, can you explain why a child is afraid of the chamber pot, refuses to take this or that food (fruits, vegetables or meat), is afraidput on slippers or tie your shoelaces. Delusional fears often indicate serious deviations in the child’s psyche and can serve as the beginning of the development of autism. Children with delusional fears can be found in neurosis clinics and hospitals, since this is the most severe form. Fears associated with certain ideas (as they say, “fixed ideas”) are called overvalued. Initially, they correspond to some life situation, and then they become so significant that the child can no longer think about anything else. Children's overvalued fears include social fears: fear of answering at the blackboard, stuttering. Children's overvalued fears are rightfully considered the most common, and practicing psychologists encounter them in 90% of all cases. Children often get “stuck” on these fears, and it can sometimes be very difficult to pull them out of their own fantasies. The most common is the fear of death. In its pure form, this fear manifests itself in 6-7 year old preschoolers, and in older children it manifests itself not directly, but indirectly, through other fears. The child understands that death is unlikely to happen suddenly, unexpectedly, and is afraid to be left alone with a threatening space or circumstances that could lead to it. After all, then something unexpected might happen and no one would be able to help him, which means he might die. Indirect children's overvalued fear of death can include: fear of darkness (in which children's imagination places terrible witches, werewolves and ghosts), fairy-tale characters, as well as fear of getting lost, attack, water, fire, pain and sharp sounds. In my work on correcting children's fears, I relied on the recommendations of A.I. Zakharova. Considering the reasons for the appearance of children's fears, types of fears, he talks about the need to prevent and eliminate them, and offers specific methods for overcoming fears using psychological and pedagogical means. In his book “Game as a way to overcome neuroses in children,” the author recommends using the games “Ball”, “Blind Man’s Bluff”, “Who’s First”, “Quick Answers”, “Penetrating the Circle”, “Bus”, “Football”, “Angry” dogs”, “Climbing”, “Battle”, etc.; as a result of which there is a playful psychological cleansing of the costs of family upbringing, a playful dramatization of fears and neutralization of the consequences of mental trauma. Parents themselves can use similar games. At the stage of collecting preliminary information, a conversation with the child’s parents (the person who asked for help) is widely practiced. To obtain additional information about the characteristics of child-parent relationships, I used the following questionnaires: Parental Attitude Questionnaire (PAI) by A.Ya. Varga and V.V. Stolin - to diagnose the parental position in relation to the child. “Analysis of Family Relationships” (AFR) E.G. Eidemiller. This technique allows us to identify various types of inharmonious family upbringing (emotional rejection, dominant and conniving hyperprotection, cruel treatment, increased moral responsibility and hypoprotection), and deviations in the relationship of parents to children, as well as personal unconscious problems of parents. The child was asked to make drawings on the topic “ Three Trees”, “My Family”, “Nonexistent Animal” with further discussion of these topics. Attention was paid to the level of anxiety of children and their self-esteem. In conclusion, the children were offered a test to diagnose the presence of fears - “Fears in houses” with the following instructions: “29 fears must be placed in the red and black houses. In which house (red or black) will terrible fears live, and in which will not fearful ones? I will list the fears, and you write down their numbers inside the house” (modification by M.A. Panfilova). The number of identified fears was compared with the norms proposed by A.I. Zakharov. In corrective work with fears, I also adhered to the stages proposed by O. Khukhlaeva. The first stage of work to correct fears should be affective stimulation of the child, or increasing his mental tone. At the same time, the ban on manifestation is lifted.