Helping My Daughter Overcome Her Fear of Dogs
Reader’s Question
My daughter will soon be 7 years old. She has an intense fear of dogs of all sizes. She is also somewhat afraid of cats but will tolerate them. I think her problem is what she considers unpredictable movements from these animals. We don’t have pets, so she has no experience with them. I have had absolutely no desire to care for any type of animal in addition to my four kids, so getting her a puppy was simply out of the question for a long time. About a month ago I finally got her to pet a puppy, although she refused to hold it which I totally respected. The owner offered to let my daughter come visit the puppy any time she wanted to pet it or play with it. Two weeks ago a neighbor’s 6 month old chihuahua got out and ran into my house and directly into my unsuspecting daughters bedroom. She screamed like someone was trying to kill her. That scared me and then we were both screaming. I managed to get the dog out of my house, but now my daughter won’t open the front door until she checks for the dog. Just yesterday, she suggested going to my friend’s house so she could pet the puppy she met, which really surprised me since the chihuahua event, but hey, I’m willing to do almost anything to help her get over this fear.
We are planning to attend an out of state wedding at the end of May. We will be staying with my aunt, who owns a very large dog who is old and doesn’t move much. Would something like that help my daughter overcome her fear or make it worse? Even if we decide to stay in a hotel, we will still be visiting this aunt at her home, as she has some physical limitations and it’s much easier for her if we visit at her home. I always do a lot of prepping when we visit a home where I know there is a dog, but her apprehension is really getting on my nerves. My now almost 9-year-old son had this same problem, but overcame it when he befriended a boy with a large dog. He still gets startled, but the intense fear isn’t there. Also, do you think I should seek counseling for my daughter?
Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply
One thing we know from years of research is that exposure to once-feared things is the key to overcoming our fears of them. That said, most of the time exposure to such things needs to be done in a gradual fashion, with successive small steps toward the eventual goal of overcoming all fear. So, it’s important to plan out just what kind of issue to address first (e.g., how to anticipate and handle sudden movements or startle reflexes an animal might display), and to prepare a series of exercises to steadily increase exposure to the kinds of events to which we need to become desensitized.
A counselor who has experience in the behavioral treatment of phobia can be a good resource. In addition to helping develop a strategy for increasing your child’s ability to approach and tolerate her feared situations, the counselor can address some of the other factors (inadvertent reinforcers, predisposing thought patterns, etc.) that might either exacerbate or perpetuate the fears you’d eventually like to overcome.
