USING A FEAR LADDER WITH CHILDREN

Many children have fears that overwhelm them and can render them into little boneless puddles on the floor, or that can cause situations where they cannot attend school or field trips due to their debilitating fear. Adults try to be helpful, but they often invalidate the child's fear or they feed into it by accepting it as something to be avoided or worked around, both of which undermine the child's level of functioning.

As I have discussed in previous posts, there are tactics that caregivers can use to lessen the anxiety of children. In this post I will discuss Exposure Therapy through the use of a Fear Ladder. The best practice is to have this journey charted out with you and your child and guided by a mental health professional.

One instance where a Fear Ladder is effective is when it is applied towards separation anxiety. Many children, as well as parents, experience high amounts of anxiety around separating, often when the circumstances for separation are new or after a traumatic experience. A Fear Ladder may be used to ask the child to participate in a series of anxiety provoking experiences, each with increasing discomfort. The idea is that if we were to ask someone to jump into the most anxiety provoking scenario, that person would become overwhelmed. An example of a Fear Ladder for a child who is unable to separate from their parent in order to to go to school, might begin with reading a Social Story about school, then going and visiting the school, meeting the teacher, riding the school bus with their caregiver/parent, engaging in a short pleasurable activity in the school with a Transitional Object and without the caregiver/parent, and so on, until the child is able to spend a day at school without the parent and without being completely overwhelmed.

Being uncomfortable is okay. Once the child's nervous system realizes that there is no threat it will discontinue the hormone production that engages the child's fight, flight, or freeze response. Mindfulness techniques should be taught to the child to help them move through each stage of increased anxiety.

This method has been shown to be incredibly effective, within a relatively short period of time. I encourage you to look at this sample Fear Ladder from AnxietyBC, and to ask any questions about its use in the comments section of this post.