New book advises parents how to quell children’s fears

An enormous, subversive and particularly potent threat to your child’s well-being is probably in your living room with her or him right now.

According to Joanne Cantor, UW–Madison professor of communication arts, television and movies present a constant parade of monsters of every description, “ready,” Cantor says, “to pounce on your child’s psyche at any moment.”

Cantor’s new book, Mommy I’m Scared: How TV and Movies Frighten Children and What We Can Do To Protect Them (1998: Harvest Books/Harcourt Brace) both dissects children’s fears and outlines possible antidotes to media-induced terrors.

Cantor says that although based on 15 years of research, the book is aimed squarely at parents. “Children’s reactions to scary scenes can be surprisingly intense and long- lasting, and can result in an alarming array of side-effects, especially nightmares and overwhelming anxieties,” she says.

The anatomy of fear is complicated, and consequently hard for parents to fathom, says Cantor. To begin with, children tend to fear very different things at different ages, so it’s often hard for adults to predict programs that will frighten a specific individual.

For instance, nasty animals, grotesque images and monsters typically terrify two- to-seven- year-olds. Between the ages of eight and 12, kids fear violence to themselves or their peers, while teens seem most vulnerable to stories featuring sexual assault or alien/occult characters.

Not surprisingly, televised news accounts of school shootings and live TV coverage of a suicide on a California freeway can present a particular problem for young viewers. Natural disaster footage of tornadoes, floods, fires and so on is especially unnerving to younger children; older ones fear crime stories such as coverage of the JonBenet Ramsey killing.

“I’m not advocating censorship – children need information about threats to their safety, and careful introductions to the negative aspects of the world they live in,” she says. “But that information should be presented in smaller and less threatening doses than TV news typically employs.”

But whether fear originates from the real world or a writer’s imagination, a frightened child demands comfort. “The warm, calm reassurance of a concerned adult is probably the best medicine,” she says. As children grow older, Cantor says they can benefit from discussions featuring logical reasoning about the unreality of a story line.

“However, if what scares them is real, reassuring kids becomes more complicated,” Cantor says. “Parents can help an older child by explaining why the horrifying event can’t happen to them, or explaining how to prevent it.”

Cantor says it’s vitally important for moms and dads to monitor what children see on TV, in videos and at the cinema. However, she also concedes that’s a difficult task: “Short of watching each and every one, how can you know in advance what’s in a particular program, video or movie?”

But her extensive work in this area has convinced Cantor completely that parents must take their children’s media-induced fears seriously. “Initially, I had no idea the problem was so severe and widespread,” she says. “Then I started listening to adults who still vividly remember their own childhood media fears. You would be amazed at the number of people who’ve given up swimming after seeing Jaws. And it’s not that they won’t swim in just the ocean – they won’t even go swimming in a lake or pool! And Jaws is just one of many, many examples of programs and movies that have interfered permanently with people’s lives.”