Many of you have heard that children’s fears are, in a way, a normal stage of development. Most children, at a predictable age, experiment fears. For example: the fear of darkness, monsters, bugs. These fears come and go.

So, why parents should get involved in their children’s efforts to overcome fears? Why not just sit and wait? After all, children are intelligent, creative and they can find solutions themselves.

Parents have to act!

First of all, because fear is an emotion that cannot be neglected. It affects the well being of the child, his capacities to learn and to relate to others.

In many cases the behaviour and the neediness of a child, who lives under the tyranny of a fear, generates a negative impact on all the family. Fear creates stressful, difficult situations for the child and for his family. It is impossible to watch and wait. Those situations need solutions urgently.

All children are looking for solutions against fear. But their life experience, their knowledge, their physical strength is limited and there are many situations in which children will not find the most effective or healthy methods. In many situations children can use wrong strategies that will bring them distress, relational problems, failures.

Fear is not just a difficult step. Fear is a crossroad in the development of a child. Because in those particular moments, the child learns, builds, creates and tests the methods, the strategies that he will use in all kind of difficult situations. In those particular moments the child constructs the image that he has about himself. So helping the child to cope and build the most effective methods is important for his general development.

The experience of a fear, can lead the child to become stronger, wiser, resilient,  a winner. The experience of fear can also pull down a child’s self confidence, it can comfort him in the idea that in life he should never use attack strategies. That it is better to run and hide!

We cannot protect our children from every stressful situation. Life brings us each day such situations. We cannot banish fears from our children’s lives. But what we can and must do is help children to find STRATEGIES that can transform the experience of fear into something which will make them stronger, wiser, more adapted to face life! Winners!

By using what parents and children have best, by using children and parents’ knowledge, interests, competences and hobbies, The PAF method stimulates the child at many levels and contributes to his harmonious developement! 

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