6 Monday June 13 2022 | the times
life
Q
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QQQ
My son has recently
become engaged to a
lovely woman who has
a seven-year-old
daughter from a
previous relationship.
We are very happy to welcome them
into our family and become step-
grandparents, but recently we have
encountered a problem.
We have a little dog that is typical
of the breed: bouncy, a bit noisy,
friendly and not the least bit
aggressive. Our great-grandson, who
is a toddler, visits regularly and plays
happily with him so he is used to
small children.
However, this little girl’s visits have
become an issue because she feels
uncontrollable terror whenever she
thinks our dog is near. For the past
few visits we have shut him in a
bedroom, but even then she is
worried he will escape and never
settles. I use the strong term
“terror” since I can think of nothing
else to describe the behaviour that
I witnessed.
On one occasion when our dog
came slightly close to her she was
almost paralysed — rigid with fright,
crying, curled in a ball as small as
she could be and not responding to
her mother holding her and trying to
manage the situation.
Throughout my career in
education I experienced many
problems with distressed or unhappy
children, but I never came across a
situation as upsetting as this. This
was a little girl showing a deep
irrational fear in a loving, safe
family home. I have heard that she
behaved in a similar way when she
went to play with a friend who had
a new kitten.
Her mother cannot recall any
incident that has caused this
problem, but is keen to know what
to do to help her. What can we do
before this problem begins seriously
to affect our family relationships?
Harriet
A
NN
A
It’s very normal for
children to have fears
about certain things
— it is a natural stage
of development — and
it has been estimated
that more than a third of children in
the UK are scared of dogs. However,
what you describe sounds more
complicated than a developmentally
normal fear and would be classed as
a phobia.
Phobias, a persistent, excessive and
irrational fear of an object or situation,
can affect anyone, regardless of age,
sex and social background. They are
the most common type of anxiety
disorder, affecting an estimated ten
million people in the UK, including
10 per cent of children and 16 per cent
of adolescents. If untreated, a phobia
will worsen and can have a significant
impact on everyday life, especially due
to the adjustments made to completely
avoid the phobic object, eg avoiding
places, people or situations.
Phobias can be divided into two
main categories. The first is simple
phobias, which are fears about specific
objects, animals, situations or
activities, for example, dogs or going
to the dentist. The other category is
complex phobias, which can be more
disabling because they are often
associated with a deep-rooted fear or
anxiety about a particular
circumstance or situation. Examples of
the latter include social phobia and
agoraphobia, which is the extreme,
irrational fear of leaving home, being
in crowded places or being in a place
where escape is difficult.
A phobia can be very extreme. To
take as an example a dog phobia, even
looking at a drawing or cartoon of a
dog could trigger a huge panic. The
fear of animals, a simple phobia, is
called zoophobia and the specific
extreme fear of dogs is cynophobia
(“cyno” is the Greek word for dog). A
phobia of cats is called ailurophobia.
The fear can be experienced as
full-blown terror, including panic
attacks. It’s understandable that
someone will want to avoid these
feelings at all costs, hence the distress
shown when being anywhere near
the phobic object. I have worked
with people who have stopped leaving
their house for fear they will see a
dog and have consequently developed
the more serious and life-impacting
agoraphobia.
Simple phobias often appear
between the ages of four and eight and
usually disappear on their own as the
child gets older. However, what you
describe, although a simple phobia,
could have such a disruptive effect on
this girl’s ability to socialise freely and
strengthen new relationships and
bonds (for example, with your family
or visiting friends who may have dogs)
that my advice would be to address it
using the evidence-based treatment
cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT).
The CBT approach for a simple
phobia is also called
desensitisation or self-exposure
therapy. It comprises: education
about anxiety and phobias;
psychological therapy including
anxiety management training;
behaviour management via
positive reinforcement and
reward; and cognitive
management, for example
challenging anxious thoughts
and learning to self-soothe
via positive self-talk, then,
when ready, using exposure
therapy to enable a gradual
facing of the fear using a
step-by-step approach.
Many families will try to
tackle this themselves;
others will engage a
clinical psychologist to
treat their child over a few
sessions. The aim would
be to take a well-planned
and systematic approach
to tackle the phobia with
the child on board,
understanding the process
and knowing that they
have the control to pace it
as is comfortable for them.
First, I suggest enabling
this girl to understand anxietyOur seven-year-old step-grandchild is paralysed
with fear when she sees our little dog
and how it affects us physically and
psychologically. I recommend the
book What To Do When You Worry
Too Much by Dawn Huebner, which
describes what anxiety is, how it
affects our bodies and minds and how
we can learn to manage it physically
and mentally so that it doesn’t control
us. I’d also find cute and funny books
and films about dogs to help her learn
to be relaxed and see them as
drawings and cartoons and on film; a
lovely book for children is Not Afraid
of Dogs by Susanna Pitzer.
Next it’s time to practise the
techniques to manage the physical
effects of anxiety, eg bringing down
heart rate and steadying breathing via
muscle relaxation and breathing
exercises. There is a wonderful app for
children called Clear Fear that offers
information, recorded exercises and
breathing circles to help children to
calm themselves in the moment of
panic (clearfear.co.uk).
I also recommend Chill Panda, a
game-based app that teaches children
anxiety-management skills by helping
a little panda to face his fears as he
explores the world (chillpanda.co.uk).
With this book and these apps this girl
will learn to manage her anxiety in
terms of the racing panic thoughts and
manage the scary physical changes
she experiences and so develop a
sense of mastery and control.
From there I suggest designing an
exposure hierarchy, which means
working out a step-wise plan of
exposure to dogs, starting small and,
as her confidence increases, building
up to meeting your dog. This will
enable a systemic desensitisation to
the fear in a manageable way; this
girl could draw it out as a ladder.
At each step she will learn to sit with
her anxiety and control it via her new
and developing anxiety-management
skills. When her anxiety goes
below 5/10, she moves to
the next step (from
standing far away from
a dog on a lead to
walking a few paces
towards that dog
etc). Each step is
praised frequently
and incentives are
offered — once she
manages a step she
gets to choose
the ice cream
everyone has after
supper.
Over time, with
regular exposure in
small steps, the
phobia will be
mastered. If the
family want to
engage professional
help I recommend a
clinical psychologist
(bps.org.uk) or to manage
this themselves I suggest
Overcoming Your Child’s
Fear of Dogs: A Step-by-Step
Guide for Parents by Stefani
M Cohen. Also the brilliant
guide by the Dogs Trust
(learnwithdogstrust.org.uk).
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Ask Professor Tanya Byron
Soon, all payments
could be digital.
Fine by me, says
Georgina Roberts,
26 — real money
is alien to Gen Z
W
ant to know
how to tell if
someone is
of a certain
age? The
simple
answer is
they carry
cash. Yes, the new marker of middle
age is the sound of coins rattling in
your purse. In my book, if you have
notes or change on you, that
immediately puts you over
the age of 40.
I’m 26 and none of my friends ever
pay with cash. It is an alien concept for
my generation. Like it or not, we are
moving towards a cashless society. A
measly one in six payments are now
made in cash, according to a study by
UK Finance last year.
My friends’ aversion to cash became
clear when one decided to rent out a
venue in Hackney, east London, for
her birthday the other weekend. We
all agreed to chip in. The hitch? The
venue wanted to be paid in cash. The
birthday girl’s seemingly simple
request for us all to bring a tenner on
the night was met with horror and
sent our WhatsApp group into
meltdown. An onslaught of frantic,
panicked messages lit up my phone.
“Guys, help, how the hell do I find an
ATM?” one asked. “I don’t have a debit
card! I only ever pay with Apple Pay
on my phone. I just
can’t do it,” said
another. We
were helpless.
The shift
towards
digital
payments
was
seriously
accelerated by
the pandemic,
when physical
money suddenly
seemed like a grubby virus-carrier
and was banned by many shops.
Itsu, Côte Brasserie and Prezzo are
among a growing number of chains
that have gone card-only for good
after the pandemic.
The death of physical money means
you won’t catch my friends carrying a
purse on a night out. Most will go to
a club with their ID and bank card
shoved into the back of their phone
case. This seems like the best life hack
in the world until you accidentally spill
a drink over your phone and the debit
card in the back becomes so infused
with Jägerbomb that the chip stops
working. I have made this fatal error
several times and would not
recommend the phone-purse.
There is only one situation in which
I will pay with banknotes and that’s ifj
aid.y
c,
al
nly
a grubby virus carrierWhat’s
If you would like
Professor Tanya
Byron’s help, email
proftanyabyron
@thetimes.co.ukGeorgina Roberts