It’s just a doctor’s check-up. It’s common for small children to be very anxious when at the doctor. That’s where they get shots. Let them be anxious. Unless your kid has a condition where they are at the doctor once a week, I wouldn’t sweat it. He’ll eventually grow out of it. In the mean time, it’s once every six months or less until they start school, and then even less unless their sick. It’s okay for him to be scared every once in a while…those are healthy emotions.
And don’t forget that toddlers are prone to developing new fears and anxieties out of nowhere. My previously fearless little Lily has suddenly become a shrieking bundle of terror when confronted with bath time. She hasn’t had a horrible bathtub incident, she’s just suddenly afraid of the bath (to the point that I worry that the neighbors will call CPS on us!) The now-11-year-old developed a phobia of spiders around age 2. The Boy was afraid of my mother.
It’s no fun for parents, but it’s normal and usually temporary for toddlers.
He just turned two, he doesn’t go to daycare but interacts great with kids his age and isn’t afraid of adults per se but if one grabs him he does get afraid.
AS someone with a lifelong anxiety disorder, I’ll inform you that that’s a great way of creating one. This is flooding. It can work, but if it doesn’t, it will backfire heavily. This is why this technique is generally not used in actual phobia cases.
I know for sure my water phobia got worse ever since a teacher repeatedly had me duck my head under water. I remember being completely fine going under water when I was baptized.
See post #14, written by a pediatrician.
Is anybody going to offer advice for the kid that the OP asked for?
There are two opposing child-rearing philosophies and the OP needs to pick one. I have a totally visceral reaction when I read or hear the opinions of those who propose that children just need to be ignored/dismissed/jollied when they are afraid, and in that way they will learn the right lesson – which is that they shouldn’t have been afraid to begin with.
This approach may work with some children. I think it only works the right way when the child so trusts the person giving them that message that they relax. Otherwise, what it teaches is other lessons such as that your parents don’t care whether you are terrified, that you are alone in this frightening world to deal with it as best you can, that you are helpless in the gigantic, overwhelming and incomprehensible world of adults . . . uh, are you seeing where I am going here?
Sensitive children do really crappy with the sink or swim, get over it approach. They learn to shrink in and dread everything. They develop psychosomatic stress illnesses because they cannot cope using the tools they have.
Sensitive children do best when they feel that someone empathizes with their emotion, when they are given enough time to process a situation (which may be a lot longer than a pediatrician has scheduled), when it is explained or shown to them what is going to happen and why, when they have something to look forward to at the end of steeling themselves to go through a process they dread (ice cream, a special gift).
The OP has to decide whether they are going to work on being the kind of parent who is trustworthy to a sensitive child.
You may easily guess that I was a sensitive child with unempathetic, insensitive parents. I am also the mother of a sensitive child, who did not do some things as easily as other children and some things she never did at all. But because I am not an insensitive unempathetic parent, she throve anyway.
When people say “he’s just doing that to get his way”, or “to get attention” – why don’t we think about what that way is, think about what on a deep level the child really wants and needs? It is usually just someone who understands and sympathizes. If adults get angy at children for expressing their needs in an irritating or inconvenient way, it is usually traceable to never being treated with respect when they themselves were children. Like Randy Newman says, “I want you to hurt like I do.”
I wish I had had a parent who did that for me – I didn’t, but at least I was able to do that for my own child. I hope the OP can be that kind of parent for his child.
What Ulfreida said.
Assuming you’ll need to go back to the doctor again in the near future, can you playact with a friend who’s a relative stranger to your son? With that “stranger,” you can take all the time you need to reassure him, to tell him exactly what’s going to be going on, that the “doctor” is going to touch him here and daddy is going to count to ten and by the time he’s done with ten the “doctor” will have finished touching him, and now the doctor is going to look in his ears, etc. And if he cries, the “doctor” can back off and you can try again at a lower level.
Although when we went for our 2-year appointment we were told we didn’t have to come back for well-child checkups until 3 years, at which point I’m sure things will be better if only because he’ll be able to articulate what’s bothering him a little better (though the reason may be totally odd – according to my mom, I was once completely set against one of my babysitters because “she smells funny!”).
(We’ve been back to the doctor once since for an elbow mishap, though… it may not be wise, I suppose, to assume that the kid will be perfectly healthy for an entire year.)
How about taking the kid to that doctor a couple of times where the pediatricion doesn’t do anything other than talk and interact with him - no scary instruments, etc - make him/her an uncle/aunt -
and if you are talking to him on the way there, don’t remind him to be a good boy and there’s nothing to be scared of - just make it as humdrum an adventure as possible (or, just the opposite - the most exciting adventure since chucky cheese).
In any event - you need to get the child trusting the pediatrician just like he/she would trust you.
And part of that understanding and sympathizing depends on the age and understanding of the child.
I think it’s possible to be gently firm with terrified toddlers, as the pediatrician up-stream says, sometimes you just have got to get it over as quick as possible. You then comfort the child afterward.
As children grow, their personality must be taken into consideration. I had parents who wouldn’t allow us to show emotions and it’s caused havoc in many of our lives. However, I’ve got a relative who also had a tough father who was determined to not repeat it, and the child never hears no and is getting to be quite spoiled.
I don’t see a universal “this is the truth” advice for all parents. I certainly feel there are more than just two philosophies in child rearing.