Does Fear Drive Kid's Paranormal Experiences?
By
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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