Q: I hope that you can help us deal with our five-year-old daughter. She is deathly afraid of dogs and cats. She gets hysterical if one of the animals happens to be near her, jumping and screaming and crying to be picked up. Now she has both her dad and me reacting. We are so afraid of her hysteria that we will do almost anything to avoid people’s pets. We will not visit friends if we know that they have dogs or cats. We won’t walk with our daughter in town for fear of the animals that we might meet and sometimes we will switch channels on the TV if an animal show is on.
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Do you have any ideas as to what will help us settle her down and get our lives back on track?
A: If your daughter’s fears of dogs and cats are based on traumatic experiences, you can best help her by seeing a psychologist trained to deal with trauma. If not, the first task is to get yourself settled down. Children caught up in fears and anxieties look to their parents for security. If Mom and Dad are also anxious, the children get frustrated and what could or should be normal concern gets built up in their minds to be a major catastrophe.
She is jumping into your arms looking for safety and security and finding a lot of anxiety, which makes calming down difficult.
The next time you see a dog or cat, try some deep breathing exercises so you are calm and relaxed when your daughter becomes hysterical.
Children should be cautious when approaching dogs and cats they do not know. Hospital emergency units see a number of children who have been bitten because they approached animals not familiar to them. Your daughter’s fears are not totally irrational.
The veterinarian’s association has a program called Be A Tree. It teaches children how to approach strange animals and how to react if either a dog or a cat should turn on them. It gives children a skill they need to protect themselves. You can check out this program on-line or get a copy from your local veterinarian.
The more you can help your daughter build some skills for dealing with dogs and cats, the more likely it is she will feel confident when she is around them.
You can also help her by reading books and watching television shows about dogs and cats. She needs to be exposed to them, not protected from them and be given the opportunity to deal with the fear on her own. She will likely do so when she is encouraged to read, think and talk about her problem.
Your daughter is still young. She will meet other fears and concerns as she gets older. Helping her work through her fear of dogs and cats may give her confidence to confront other problems in her future. Problem solving is a skill well worth developing.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan who has taught social work at two universities. Mail correspondence in care of Western Producer, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or e-mail jandrews@producer.com.
