About Ettina Expertise My biggest area of expertise is in autistic and other developmentally disabled gifted kids (especially creatively gifted disabled kids). I can also answer questions about gifted/talented children in general. I can't answer questions about legal issues and such (eg fighting the education system), but I can answer questions about what it's like for the child and so on. I'm better at dealing with questions about school-aged children than preschoolers.
Experience I am a highly creative autistic person with a tested IQ in the gifted range. I've also read a lot about gifted kids.
Education/Credentials Just high school. I'm a first-year student at university.
Question My 11-yr old daughter has had ann excessive fear of the supernatural. Just hearing a ghost story from friends causes her to fear being anywhere by herself. She refuses to go to her room, the bathroom or any part of the house without someone with her. If I force to do so, she goes but then starts screaming hysterically, begging for someone to come. She doesn't see anything, but still is unreasonably afraid. What should I do?
Answer Well, pretty clearly she should not listen to ghost stories very often.
I'm not sure why she's so afraid. Some highly creative children are easily scared by ghost stories and such because they imagine the story very vividly and can't turn their imagination off. Emotionally sensitive children are also prone to reacting strongly to any story with upsetting themes such as death or suffering. Also, children who take things literally may not understand that the stories aren't real, and therefore find those stories scary because they think it's true.
If you determine the reason, then you can deal with it better. A very literal child would need to have the concept of 'fantasy' explained to them in direct language, and any fictional story should be clearly labelled as such to that child (so not 'it happened to a friend of a friend' because they'll believe that).
A highly creative or sensitive child (and the two overlap a lot, by the way) would probably do best to listen to stories about good supernatural creatures. For a highly creative child, instructions to imagine a certain character protecting them from danger wherever they go would also help. For a highly sensitive child, fears will tend to increase when they're under stress in other areas, so reducing stress in general, even if it seems to have nothing to do with ghost stories, will help.
