Response to a Readers Question

One of our followers on this blog recently asked a question regarding nighttime anxiety and fears with children in their preschool years.  As we all know, sleep is very important in many ways, health benefits, defining how the following day will go and many more.  Children need their sleep and parents as you know, you need your sleep too, there is no way to parent and tackle all the tasks you face on a day to day basis.  So I did a little research to try and help parents come up with a plan to help their child who has night anxiety, night fears or even as far as night terrors.  (I personally know about night terrors, my younger brother had them from the age of two until he was about three and a half, they are scary and impossible to sleep through if you are in the house.) 

            There was a recent study that was done on children between the age of two and four who all experience nighttime fears (NF).  “The children were placed into two groups, one group who received a doll and was told to take care of that doll, the other group was given a doll and was told that that doll would protect them.”  (Kushnir & Sadeh, 2012 pg. 66) These children were then observed to see which of the two methods worked best in eliminating or lessening the frequency of nighttime fears. As a result after these children were observed and the results had been analyzed, it has been proven that both of these approaches help children and their nighttime fears and anxieties.  With that said, “the children who were given a the doll who were given the doll with the thought that it would serve as a protector,” had significantly less nighttime fears than those who were given the other doll. (Kushnir & Sadeh, 2012 pg. 74)

Now what causes nighttime fears vary from child to child, situation to situations, but after all if the child is experiencing these fears it is important to provide them with something to help, talking with them does not always solve the problem, although it does help. This doll or figure does not need to be need to be a doll necessarily, it could be a bear or an action figure (although that might not be the most comfy), it could even be something that you bring into their room when they are having these fears and place it next to their bed, a photo perhaps. It is helpful to give your child the confidence that nothing is going to happen and that this figure what ever you choose it to be will help protect them when they start to feel those fears.. So parents, get back to getting full nights of sleep and help your children sleep well also.  Hopefully this little bit of advice can help you and your child sleep better at night, also if you have not read the post on bed time routines, I recommend you check that out as well.

Kushnir, J., & Sadeh, A. (2012). Assessment of brief interventions for nighttime fears in preschool children. (1 ed., Vol. 171, pp. 66-75). Retrieved from