My boys are pretty used to taking pills by now (they’re six and eight) and probably would prefer this to liquids or chewables that taste bad.
Keep this in mind, and you can offer your son a choice between one regular Tylenol or two chewables. He may appreciate this. Just make sure he knows that he can’t chew the regular Tylenol - that shouldn’t be an issue if he is a smart as you say.
This.
I also suffered from an excess of information at an age when I didn’t have the emotional maturity to handle it (nuclear holocaust, anyone?). I would obsess about each new “danger”, and seek more information, the availability of which only made me think the danger was worse than anybody would let me believe. A bad case of too much too soon.
Unfortunately, because nobody ever took the time to talk me out of my fears, or check that the material I read was appropriate for my age (“if she is able to read it she can read it”), I am still obsessing about my fears. I suggest you take it down a notch, let him grow up at a slower pace.
I am sure if I had internet back them I’d be a mental wreck now.
It’s an interesting question. Does catering to a bright child’s obsessive questioning and going deeper and deeper into a kid’s fetish about something lead to better understandings or worse problems with anxiety? Like you, by nature I’ve got a strong “go deeper” inclination, but it really sounds like (per your OP) that he’s not so much interested in these topics intellectually as he is is from a fetishistic danger assessment perspective to feed his anxiety.
In this case a blunt parental "it’s not a problem, don’t worry about it’ might actually be a better response to a congenitally anxious child than feeding him more data.
My nephew was like this, and has grown into quite the confidant teen now. He watched the news one day when Elisabeth Sharp was kidnapped and for a couple years had these thoughts that someone would steal him away from his parents, etc. Even when he came to stay with us for a weekend, you could see/feel him get anxious if you were out of sight. He also had the same issues with medicines, etc. that your son seems to have too and he has gotten past that as far as I know.
Eventually he sort of outgrew it. My brother stopped letting him watch the news, which helped him quite a bit. In many ways I would say though my brother and his wife are a bit over protective and I am not sure how much of that led to his anxiety.
But overall I don’t see it as over the top behavior. Every kid is different. My own daughter would be the type that would want more information, whereas I think my nephew was better off having less information. Good luck!
Bricker,
Like other folks have suggested using different wording, your little man is afraid because he has such an acute mind. Accelerated intelligence and the associated “conceptual sensitivity” as I call it, can easily make a child prone to fear.
<really not bragging here…>
I was the same way when I was a kid. I thought about everything. Thoroughly. In doing so, I was able to conceive the worst possibilities, and these have a way of seizing a child’s mind.
My daughter is much the same way. She got both her mother’s and my smarts, as well as my sensitivity. As a result, she processes ideas so deeply, that she sees potential dangers lurking around every corner. She’s not paranoid or handicapped or mentally ill or anything, just…very tender.
</really not bragging>
It’s both a blessing and a curse. Your son will have to deal with a lot of fear in his life, but it will make him a stronger person. And his intelligence, ironically the source of all that fear, will develop to the point that he can use it to combat the fear.
Best wishes.
The problem is that his fears are not completely irrational. Some children do die of diseases or in fires or as victims of a crime. The normal defense mechanism against this is irrational denial - “Nope, not me. Nothing like that will ever happen to me. I’m invulnerable and immortal.” Bricker Junior’s problem may be that he’s too intelligent to believe this.
I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not a parent. I suppose you could try to invoke parental authority and try to convince him of something irrational for his own peace of mind - “Don’t worry. I’m your dad and I’ll never let anything bad happen to you.” or “Carry this lucky rabbit’s foot and it’ll protect you from harm.” or “Jesus and the angels are watching over you.” - but it’s up to you whether you think lying for a good cause is justified or not.
Just tell him death isn’t so bad, it’s not like you’re alive to feel it
I don’t see that at all. He’s not afraid of being afraid, he’s afraid of bad things happening. He’s having problems dealing with things that make him feel bad, but not the fear itself.
In this case, it sounds like a combination of catastrophizing (the idea that being sick means death is likely) and conditioning (he’s afraid when he’s sick, and he takes his medicine when he’s sick. Therefore, he becomes afraid of taking medicine.)
The only way to deal with this fear is for him to face it. It can happen naturally, like it apparently happened with other people in this thread, or you can try to make it happen. The thing is, you absolutely should not force it in any way. It has to be his decision to not want to be afraid. You can only try to convince him to do what he needs to do.
What he needs is, well, CBT. He’s got to learn how to think, so that he won’t be afraid, and he needs to do behaviors that will undo his conditioning. Reassuringly tell him that taking medicine will make him not sick. Do your best to show how catastrophizing doesn’t make sense. And, finally, encourage him to face his fear gradually.
And, if all else fails, get him to a therapist who knows how to deal with this. You do not want him winding up like me–I actually am afraid of fear, and am having to fight that.
He’ll probably grow out of it. When I was 8, I had a paralyzing fear of death. I would lay awake at night, trying to imagine what it would be like to not exist, which both confused and terrified me. The idea that I could stop existing forever was mind boggling. How could something that once existed completely disappear from the universe? Doesn’t it have to go somewhere, or turn into something? Even dead bodies don’t just stop existing. I had a phase where I was terrified to go to sleep because of these thoughts.
I also had a phase where I was obsessed with disease and borrowed every book I could from the school library about diseases. I was terrified of shots to the point where I’d rather be sick than have to deal with a needle.
I once borrowed a book about vampire legends and it scared me so much that the mere presence of the book terrified me. I hid it under a load of stuff and when it came time to return it, I told my mom where it was and refused to even look at it again. (She almost fell over laughing.)
TLDR version: in my experience, it’s normal for bright and imaginative kids to have exaggerated fears. At some point they’ll grow out of it. Kids are pretty resilient. My parents were rather unsympathetic to my fears and I still managed to grow out of them.
This sounds like extremely normal thinking for his mental stage. Small kids have a more limited capacity to perceive the world around them, whereas 9-10-year-olds have an expanded world view in comparison. The world has suddenly gotten bigger but his mental and emotional maturity is lagging, so that all of that scary information is looming all around him without his being able to sort it into place just yet. More sensitive people feel this more intensely. My son went through a phase of being deeply concerned about tornados and meteors at about that age, and my daughter was nervous about foxes when she was tiny and fire when she got to that point.
He’ll work it out in the end. In the meantime, see if he’s better served with more or less information at his disposal, and let him see how seriously he should take these fears by feeling how seriously or not you take them.
And his being tense in your basement after seeing The Gentlemen down there? That’s just a sign of his sharp intelligence. Shit, now I’m nervous about your basement. ::shudder::
My son is a fourth grader, he just turned ten. He too is intelligent and thinks deeply. At the same time he is so credulous it makes me gasp sometimes. If it’s on the TV he believes it, no matter what we say.
His besetting fears are death, ghosts and poor marks at school.
He went to pieces the other day as he watched a classmate discussing marks with their rather demanding but very kind teacher… Sigh. It wasn’t even his test! He has slept in my bed since July because I was stupid enough to let him watch five minutes of one of those crap “Mysterious things on video or in photos”. Last week I insisted he try to sleep in his bed again, so he starts there but inevitably when I wake up in the morning, there he is again. I’m a deep sleeper!
I used to be very afraid as a child too, but my mother would tease me mercilessly if she even got a sniff of my weakness, so I learned to hide them, and instead could not eat and had horrible stomach aches a lot of the time. On the one hand, I learned that my fears were mostly surmountable by myself, so I am now a confident and reasonably unafraid person. However I’d like my kids to be able to express their fears to me and for me to be sympathetic.
Now I am trying to come to a balance between sympathetic and confirming his fears. We alternate between giving him more information and also cutting it off. We also let him come into our bed if he wants to, it’s no bother to us and a great comfort to him.
It’s a hard age imagination/experience wise, and I feel for your son. He will grow out of it though, I am sure.
This may be going out on a limb, as I am not a parent myself and I am bringing my own interests into the conversation, but does he have a dog?
In addition to the advice given above, a dog might be helpful.
The right dog would be brave and solid, friendly and unafraid of new things, large enough to be huggable and sturdy. Taking care of the dog would be a responsibility to concentrate on; there’s a lot to learn even for a bright kid. Something to focus on other than his fears.
Consciously exposing the dog to new situations in order to socialize him properly would involve your kid in showing the dog new things while keeping a brave front.
The dog will take a monthly heartworm prevention pill quite eagerly – ours love the flavored pills – and might need other medication, which can be slathered with peanut butter in order to get the dog to take it happily. This might help him overcome his fear of medication. Taking the dog to the vet for checkups would give the boy a chance to be the brave one helping his buddy through fears.
A dog is also a confidant and playmate. Dogs are intensely physical beings and need touching and exercise, both of which are excellent ways to calm one’s emotional state, and the right dog (not a nervous Chihuahua) will be free from worry, placid and friendly.
Just something to think about.
edit: and a rescue dog from a responsible rescue organization that evaluates the dogs is not only more reliable than a purchased dog which might be an unknown quantity, but also gives the boy certain knowledge he’s saved a life, which may give him more confidence in the face of fear of death.
If you’re right, and he is very bright, then perhaps it’s time for a short course in the basics of statistical odds? It’s playing with numbers at it’s heart, so he might enjoy it. How to convert the material so it’s digestible by a child, I wouldn’t know, but there must be a way.
A dog is a great idea - I had a bad nightmare a few weeks ago when my boyfriend was out of town and I couldn’t get over it, so I let Captain sleep with me.
I’m 30. Don’t tell anyone. 
Seriously, at that age I was terrified of the idea of a house fire. I’d done all the stuff the firemen tell you to do when they come to your school - worked out an evacuation plan with my parents, you know, all that. But I’d lie in bed thinking about what I’d grab if we had to run. I got over it eventually.
I’d recommend against this. The problem with statistics is that it shows the chances of something bad happening to him are remote. But it also shows him that it’s possible.
You might try to reassure him that there’s a billion kids in the world and only ten of them get struck by lightning every year. You may be telling him that the odds are 100,000,000-1 in his favor. But he may be thinking “What if I’m one of the ten kids who gets hit?”
I don’t really have many details it’s a subject my friend is uncomfortable talking about but I’ve seen H. in situations that used to send him running for the door taking a deep breath and talking quietly to himself. I’m not sure how she got him to do this, but he tends to mutter things like “It’s okay if baby A takes that toy, it’s a baby toy and it won’t hurt him” or “The cars are behind that fence and they aren’t allowed to come over here so I can ride my bike here”
Yeah, this is fairly common for intelligent children. There is so much they can intellectually understand, without really being able to process it. It also sounds like he has “gotten” the fact of mortality at a very young age. It’s never easy.
The cuddling up to you is the part that most jives most with me though. Double his hug quotient for a while, and be a little slower to speak (i.e. give him time to come out with anything he might be hesitant to say.) There is probably something specific that made death become real to him, and now he is on the watch for possible causes.
My 9 1/2 year old son, also a fourth grader, is full of fears, too. They’re at an age developmentally where they can comprehend much of what they hear and see in the news and are also going to be exposed to a greater amount of information and input from various sources including their friends, television, etc. Last year, it was “the grass man” at the local ice cream stand which has a field behind it. A bunch of kids told him and his friends about the lurking “grass man” in the field. He felt much better after the field was harvested and effectively leveled to the ground. And sure enough, there was no grass man exposed.
Just this morning, after struggling with him to take a shower with the curtain closed and me not in the bathroom…after he finished and was getting dressed, he came in and told me he kept hearing footsteps coming up the basement stairs. The basement door was open and is across from the bathroom. He demonstrated the pounding footsteps. This is what I told him: “You know what that is, bud? That’s your imagination, with very heavy boots on. Go tell your imagination to take its boots off in my house and you go finish getting ready for school. Now.”
Less info, some humor, and continue on with the next task at hand so he can move on with his day.
Three suggestions:
when he identifies something he’s afraid of, work with him to develop a plan of action. (Afraid of fire in a crowded theater? Plan of action is to identify the nearest exit and walk, don’t run to the outside, then call 911.)
explain to him that he can “fake it 'til he makes it.” Most of the people we consider brave will swear they aren’t - they were just as scared as any of us. They just managed to do something WHILE they were scared. Pretend to be brave, and you are. No one else will know otherwise.
give him someone/something to be brave for. A cousin of mine had bad asthma when he was a little boy, and he would get scared during the attacks, making them worse. His mom got him a dog, and every time he had an asthma attack, he would reassure the dog that everything was okay, the inhaler would start working in a minute, and the attack would be over shortly. By being brave for the dog, he could make it through the scary stuff.
Oh, and a fourth thing for free, because I have no idea if it will work: give him an anti-tiger charm. So long as he carries the charm, he cannot be eaten by a tiger/killed by a germ/die in a fire, et cetera. He’ll see right through it, but at the same time, as he makes it a joke, he can make fun of his fear.
Missed the edit window, so apologies for the double post.
Death is a hot topic at this age, your child is not out of sync with his peers on that. My 4th grader has been ruminating on the subject, too. They’re just at an age where the whole finality of death becomes an intellectual reality and an emotional nightmare. My son worries that I’m going to die, that he’s going to die, that his father’s going to die. He knows that everyone dies and that it’s inevitable and out of anyone’s control. That’s pretty scary stuff for a young guy. It’s at a different level now than it was when he was younger and just figuring out death. There’s just more depth to his thinking, but emotionally, he’s still young and frightened by things that are not in his control.
I’ve taught all three of my kids a “relaxation” technique to use at bedtime. It’s pretty simple; three deep breaths, then alternately tightening/relaxing each muscle group from the toes up to the head and then the whole body at once. Then verbally guide them to go to a place in their mind that makes them happy. Initially, have them describe it or help them to choose the elements that would be most comforting. After awhile, they can do it themselves. That’s when I leave with a kiss to the head… and a nightlight on.