A Child’s Fear of Bugs

I was hiking with a daughter and two small grandchildren when 4 - 5-year-old Geri stated shrieking in terror.  A bug had landed on the sleeve of her sweater!  I grabbed her arm next to the bug and gently nudged it onto the back of my hand.  As it crawled across my hand, I shook my finger at angrily.  “You’re a bad bug to scare Geri!  And if you ever scare her again, I’ll tell your Mommy on you, and she won’t let you watch cartoons for a whole week!”

The bug cooperated wonderfully by flying off at that precise moment.

Geri watched all this with rapt attention, but was still somewhat shaken.  So I said, “That was a bad bug to scare you, wasn’t it?”  She agreed heartily.  I then suggested we try to find some other bugs, and just pretend to be scared of them.

After failing to catch butterflies, anoles and water bugs, I dug around in the leaf humus and found a beetle.  As it started crawling on my hand, I said, “Okay, let’s all pretend to be scared of it.  Let’s all yell together.”  I started by yelling, “It’s going to bite me!  It’s going to eat up my whole hand!  It’s going to eat up the whole world!  Help!  Eek!”

Geri and her mother playfully joined in pretending to be scared.

I then pointed out how interesting it looked – how different it’s legs were from ours, how it walked, and so forth.

We then found another bug I didn’t recognize.  I told Geri we could pretend to be scared off it without picking it up, because it might actually sting a little bit.  Then we found a Daddy Longlegs.  As it was climbing on my hand, I asked Geri what we should name it.

“Climby.”

I asked whimsically, “I wonder if Climby might like a small hand to climb on?”

Within a few moments, Geri was giggling as Climbly walked all over her hand.

I then told her a story about a Mommy and Daddy who were out walking with their two children, Alicia (Geri’s favorite name) and Brutus.  Daddy found a bird feather on the ground and showed it to Alicia.  He let her smell it, feel how soft it was when she rubbed it on her nose, and how easily it bent in her hand.  Then he gave the feather to Brutus, who grabbed it and started chasing Alicia, “I’m going to touch you with this bird feather!  I’m going to touch you with this feather!”

“Do you know what happened?  Alicia was scared to death!  She started screaming and running and crying, and wanted Daddy to pick her up and hold her to protect her from that terrible bird feather.”

I then asked Geri if she thought Alicia was really scared of the bird feather. 

“No.”

“What do you think she was really scared of?” 

“Her brother, who was being mean to her.”

I agreed, and we then continued our walk and looked for other bugs.

There are several possible understandings about why this was an effective intervention:  First, I wanted to acknowledge her fright, but without suggesting there was any real danger.  I wanted, through playfulness and exaggeration to demonstrate that the bug was harmless.  I also wanted to give her a sense of control (deliberately looking for bugs to be scared of, and then giving “Climby” a name).  Finally, I told the story to normalize the whole situation and to reinforce her new attitude about bugs.

Geri called me a few days later to tell me about another “Climby” she had found in her yard.

“Did you pretend to be scared if it?”

“NO!!!”

We then talked some more about “Climby #2" and I told her to say “Hello” from me when she saw him again.