Child is terrified of storms/ 5 year old

[Soconcerned]

I have a 5 year old daughter.  She is very smart and friendly.  She has recently developed a fear of storms and everything that goes with them.  From a cloud covering the sun to.... everything.  Her summer camp teacher told me that she looks out the window about every 5 - 10 mins and asks if it is going to rain over and over again.  So this is effecting her at school and she starts Kindergarden in 3 weeks.  At home she seem to be looking out the window less but when she wakes up, the first thing she asks is if it is going to rain.  She has even asked me why she is so worried about it... none of the other kids are she says.  She know that clouds can bring rain, and with rain there can be thunder, and (we live in Texas) she knows that a really bad storm can bring tornados. So she asks, will it rain and if I say yes, then she asks if there will be a tornado.  We have never been in a tornado but at her school many months back the tornado alarms went off and the put all the kids in the hall.  It scared her, I know that but it has just gotten worse.  At what point to I need to get her help? Is the intense of a fear normal at this age? What can I do?
Thank you for any advice.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

Such intense fear, generated by an experience such as the one that occurred at school, can be quite persistent with children this age. It is best to be patient, understanding and supportive without going to extremes to reassure the child. Sometimes our well-intentioned efforts to reassure actually compound the fear (e.g., when a child is worried about a monster in the closet and we actually check - this unwittingly communicates the message that a monster could be in the closet). It can be helpful to ask the child what would be useful and reassuring to them - they can often give us clues about steps to take. Relative to seeking help, the best gauge is to examine if the fear is getting in the way of normal day-to-day pursuits. If it is, after this number of months, seeking help makes sense. On the other hand, even though the fear persists, if your daughter is going about her business and mastering the routine demands of her life, it wouldn't be irresponsible to let her adjust to the coming school year and see how that goes. The good news is that, ultimately, the fear subsides, particularly if the child does not have a serious baseline level of functioning typified by fears and anxieties.

[BuddleiaGirl]

After Hurricane Floyd, my daughter had the same problem, would not go outside when it was cloudy, constantly checking the weather, etc. She ended up seeing a child psychologist. We used the following as a guideline: "Is her fear interfering with her enjoyment of life and things she would normally enjoy doing?" Our answer was yes, it was. She loves to play outside. The psychologist worked with her for a year, and she has mastered it. One of the things we did was make a chart with all of the different kinds of weather on it, like a Twister game spinner, only it went just halfway around. She would move the pointer to what the weather was like that day, sunny, a little cloudy, pouring rain, thundering, etc., and they had to be in order from what scared her the least to the most. She had to assign the values, so if she felt that wind scared her more than raining, that was where she put it when we made the chart. It helped to be able to say that "It is only sprinkling, so you are only scared to 4 today!" The goal is to reevaluate it periodically and if just cloudy no longer scares her, it's value get moved to 0 just like sunny. This way, although they can't control the weather, the CAN control how scared they feel about it.It also helps a little to teach them all they will absorb about how weather happens. Knowledge is power. Now, thunderstorms still scare my daughter, but she does not get hysterical if I have to go out and secure something in the wind, or if she gets rained on. She is still afraid, but she knows how to handle her fear. She is 12 now, and has a set of earplugs she wears so that she can't hear the thunder at night. If it thunders during the day, she has other things that can distract her. I met with her school councellor and teacher each year before school started, and told them of her phobia, and they were very understanding. We decided that she would remain in the classroom during a storm, and the teacher would close the blinds if there were a lot of visible signs (lightening, high winds) If she became very upset and unable to handle it, she would go to the councellor's office and she would help her try to calm down with breathing techniques and other calming methods, and she could even cry there if she wanted to. If the councellor could not get her calmed back down, then I would be called to come get her. I never had to get her. I know it can seem like a silly thing, but phobias are not reasonable. I think it is best to see someone who can help before it gets worse. Good luck, and tell her that someone else's little girl had the same thing, and she got better.

[Confused2764]

A related discussion, Granddaughter saw tornado was started.