In the process of upbringing, in each age period of the baby, you have various difficulties. The appearance of phobias is one of the problems that can show up at any stage of growing up a little man. What to do if the child is afraid of death. How dangerous is this fear and does it have the limits of the norm. What are the age-related features of anxiety.

We'll talk about this today.

Fear of death

The fear of death is considered one of the strongest human phobias that can form in childhood. How a child will relate to the finiteness of earthly existence depends entirely on you and your loved ones.

Fear of death in children has options:

1. Fear of dying yourself or losing loved ones;
2. May underlie other fears: darkness, illness, confined space, attacks, war, or being alone at home (read the article on the topic: The child is afraid to be in the room and at home alone >>>).

Moderate fear of death is not a pathology, but speaks of the full development of the child's psyche. The manifestation of the anomaly will be extreme forms: from complete indifference to one's existence, to horror of the inevitability.

The information about the finiteness of life for the baby needs to be realized and processed, otherwise, fear can go deep into the subconscious, intertwine with other phobias and interfere with normal communication.

Interesting fact! Children from believing families experience the fear of death much less frequently and in a less safe way. Since the Christian teaching states that a person's life never ends, and after the death of the body, the soul continues to live.

Causes of fear at different ages

Each child's fear of death manifests itself in an individual degree and has different origins. Reasons for intense fear can be:

• death of a loved one or beloved pet;
• sensitive type of the child's nervous system (current article on the topic: >>>);
• frequent illnesses of the baby;
• upbringing in an incomplete family.

If you know the reason, then you definitely need to talk with the child. The main message of such conversations is your sincere desire to help the baby understand difficult issues, a manifestation of care, love and interest in his problem. Do not worry, if love is the basis, then the right words will definitely be found.

Important! Keep in mind that girls are more likely to be afraid of death than boys.

Up to 3 years

1. For the first three years of life, the baby actively explores the world and such issues as passing away do not excite his consciousness;
2. He perceives people and the environment as a constant;
3. The little discoverer is very attached to mom and dad, does not think of himself as a separate person. Therefore, until the age of three, the problem of fear of death will not arise in you. Use the opportunity to prepare well for the next conversation.

3 to 7

• After 3 years, your child not only receives new knowledge, but also evaluates it;
• At this stage of growing up, the baby feels invulnerable, while the child is afraid of the death of parents or other loved ones - all this can become the basis for strong feelings , with which you need to work. The fear of losing mom and dad at the psychological level is perceived by the baby as a loss of care, support, attention, protection;
• In this age period, a close interweaving of several fears of the baby is characteristic: darkness (read what to do in this case in the current article: The child is afraid of the dark >>>), closed space, fear of falling asleep, since terrible dreams are possible where someone wants a child eat, or some entities attack;
• So the fear of death in preschool children acquires vague features, forming a kind of hodgepodge of several different fears, which are mostly based on the instinct of self-preservation;
• By the age of 5, your baby develops abstract thinking, he is interested in such categories as space and time. An understanding of the finiteness of the existence of natural phenomena and a person comes, your child will begin to ask questions related to the subject of death, and everything connected with it.

Over 7

After 7 years, your children form a conscious idea of ​​the end of life, as an inevitable establishment, reconciliation with this fact, or the phobia develops into a pathological form.

Know! The fear of death has open and hidden forms. The first option is directly the fear of dying, and in the second case, the phobia is expressed through fears of sharp objects, water, fire, natural disasters, high altitude, choking on food - all that can hypothetically lead to death.

The fear of death in children of primary school age is more difficult to diagnose because of the formed sense of shame and the need for personal space. The child is able to carefully hide their experiences. You may complicate the situation with new emotions in connection with attending school and acquiring additional fears of a social nature.

Teenagers

1. The immaturity of the teenage psyche is expressed in a penchant for magical consciousness and an increased interest in the theme of death;
2. Impressive natures have a wild imagination: they give increased attention to signs and symbols, invent various scary stories about vampires and ghosts, scare each other;
3. A moderate manifestation of the fear of death in your teenager is the key to normal personality development;
4. The fear of death in older children is intensively disguised as various kinds of social phobias, in addition, your matured child can become very withdrawn into himself. If you have excellent communication and mutual trust, then it will be much easier for you to help him cope with the difficulties that arise.

At whatever age the question of your baby’s death arises, the main thing is not to dismiss him with excuses, honestly answer the questions that have arisen, and dispel doubts. And ideally, prepare in advance for a conversation, so that in the event of an experience with a crumb, without putting it off indefinitely, have a useful conversation with him.

Important! Do not explain the death of a loved one by sleep or a long departure. This can provoke additional fears and, when the deception is revealed, the baby will receive psychological trauma.

If you have determined that the child is afraid of death, what to do in such a situation? Take into account some universal useful tips, but consider the age of the crumbs.

• Throughout the entire period of the formation of the child's psyche, show attention, patience, care, love towards the baby;
• If grief happened in the family, and the child has questions, be sure to answer them as correctly as possible. In the absence of strength for such conversations, ask a loved one to talk with the child;
• Do not discuss your feelings about death in front of the baby;
• A moderate dose of new emotions: a circus, a park, a theater will help distract an impressionable child from negative experiences. The main thing - do not overdo it;
• Explain death with the most neutral interpretations: old age or serious illness;
• During an exacerbation of fear, do not send the child to a health camp and, if possible, reduce trips to hospitals (topical article on the topic: The child is afraid of doctors >>>);
• Dream with your child about his future: profession, family;
• Consider the fact that the fear of death is often accompanied by a fear of darkness, closed space, loneliness. If you find additional phobias, eradicate them too;
• Do not allow your child to watch movies on TV or on the Internet with bloody scenes, cruelty and violence;
• Read fiction to your child, where the author tells about the death in an accessible language. For example, P. Stalfelt "The Book of Death", the fairy tales of Mr. H. Andersen "The Little Mermaid", "Angel", "The Girl with Matches".

The creations of modern psychologists are capable of helping a child overcome the fear of death:

1. The therapeutic tale of psychologist I. Gavrilova "Drop";
2. M. Antonov "Sunbeam";
3. T. Griza "Jin's Magic Destiny".

If you find a fear of death in a child, what to do in this case, how to behave correctly? To begin with, understand that there is nothing to worry about in such matters of the baby, this is a full-fledged stage in the development of the personality. In order to tell him in an accessible way about the end of life, you first need parents to accurately determine their position in relation to death and find the right words for a child whom no one knows better than you.

Anxiety and fear are among the most common reactions in childhood, such as surprise, joy or sadness. All these are important emotional manifestations of the mental life of every person. But, children sometimes have fears that are not always clear to adults.

For example, many people are afraid that their parents will die or divorce. Such anxiety depends on the innate instinct for self-preservation (without it, the baby simply could not survive). But, here, the child does not yet have life experience that would help to analyze the situation.

On the other hand, adults wise with life experience often “brush off” children's fears, considering them far-fetched and not serious. Not surprisingly, children not only continue to be afraid, but their fears intensify. If you do not pay attention to this, do not take any measures, everything can end in chronic sleep disturbance and neurosis.

If the child is now afraid of the parents' divorce or their death, why is this happening? What are these fears about? How to fix the situation? I invite you to discuss this topic on the pages of the site "Popular about health":

Why do children fear the death of their parents??

As a rule, the cause of such fear is the death of one of the family members. In this way, the fragile child's psyche tries to cope, to survive a strong negative shock. A productive psychological way out of difficult emotions is anxiety about living parents. So a small person subconsciously tries to cope with the loss.

The child is afraid of loneliness, that he will be left alone without the help of relatives. This is a normal experience for any age. For each of us, the presence of a close person nearby is vital, who can support, suggest, regret, etc. In childhood, these desires are exacerbated due to the lack of life experience.

Periodic manifestations of such fears are normal, if not, they take painful, obsessive forms. After all, the complete absence of fear that parents will die often indicates trouble in the family, or low emotional sensitivity, superficiality of feelings.

In particular, this is often observed in children living in single-parent families, as well as in those whose parents suffer from alcoholism. Such fears and experiences are often characteristic of impressionable children with a sensitive psyche. And also for those who have experienced the death of a loved one.

Why is a child afraid that his parents will divorce?

This is also a very common problem. It is based on the same reason - the child is afraid of loneliness, does not feel sufficiently protected by the parents.

According to child psychologists, such fears are often experienced by children who already have a negative experience of temporary separation from their mother, when they feel abandoned and helpless. The roots can go during infancy, when the mother left the baby alone, reacted late to his calls, crying, etc.

Childhood fear that parents will divorce may be a reflection of a difficult, stressful period in the relationship of parents. For example, if a child sees quarrels, scandals, or when one of the parents has already left the family for a while.

What to do?

Analyzing the above, we can state that the child perceives the death or divorce of parents as a threat to personal security. It is a huge stress for him to be alone, without mom and dad. After all, then they cease to be a guarantee of his safety.

As we have said, such experiences are common to all children. However, if they occur frequently, if the fears are very strong, you should try to protect the child from any stressful situations, give him more attention, love and care. Don't show your concern about his fears. He should feel in you a reliable, strong support. Should know that you won't leave him, for some reason.

Talk to him more often, do not dismiss his worries and anxieties. When a child "pronounces" his fear, he gradually gets rid of it.

If a loved one has died, or mom and dad are breaking up, tell him about it calmly, without hysteria and tears in your voice. Anxious expectations can only be dispelled by patient explanation and persuasion.

The fear of losing your parents can be eliminated with the help of new positive experiences. For example, most often the whole family go for walks, go to an amusement park, go out of town, visit the pool, etc. Talk frankly with your baby, while expressing confidence in the stability, certainty and strength of relationships within your family.

All this will help him cope with fear, gradually form a comfortable feeling of security and reliability.

It is known that children express their emotions, sensations, experiences through drawing. Ask your child to draw their own fear. Then put the drawing together in a box, lock it with a key and say that now he has nothing to be afraid of, since fear is under lock and key and you will not let him go out again. Another option is to tear the drawing into pieces together and discard.

As we mentioned at the very beginning, fears are inherent in all children. Usually, with age, most of them pass without a trace, but on condition that everything is in order in the family. If you can’t cope on your own, contact a child psychologist. The specialist will definitely help.

The fear of death is one of the strongest human phobias. For many, it comes from childhood. And it depends only on the parents and relatives of the child how correctly the little man will take the given, that everything has its end, including life. How does the fear of dying appear in babies, and is it possible to avoid this problem? The answer to this question will help moms and dads find the right approach to such a serious side of the educational process.

Until the age of three, the consciousness of a child is a sponge that absorbs the surrounding information. The process of perception is directly related to the need to feel and touch everything new. From the age of 3, in addition to gaining knowledge, the baby already needs to analyze them. During this period, a number of fears arise, the strongest of which is the fear of death. At the same time, the baby considers himself invulnerable, because mom and dad, grandparents are nearby - they will not allow any force to take him away. This conviction persists until adolescence and is a characteristic of the normal mental development of children. But for their loved ones (parents, relatives), the child really worries a lot.

Thus, we can conclude that the fear of death is a natural phobia that occurs in children after 3 years of age, with the most active phase up to 5 years. Gradually, other issues and interests crowd out the topic of passing away, and by the age of 8, the inevitability is realized. Otherwise, a pathological process begins, which requires the intervention of a child psychologist.

This is interesting. Until adolescence, the child also experiences the fear of his own death. During this period, he may be afraid of scratches on his body, the slightest ailment, associating this with a possible reason for dying. Such work of the psyche is not considered a deviation from the norm, it is a stage of growing up.

Are all babies susceptible to the fear of death?

If a child does not have a fear of death, then he is probably brought up in a dysfunctional family, and therefore he has such superficial feelings. Slightly less common are cases when cheerful, optimistic mothers and fathers have a baby who does not face this fear until primary school age. Such a delay is not considered abnormal. Also, phobias are not inherent in children who are kept in greenhouse conditions, they are protected from reality, which is a mistake: a baby, completely devoid of fears, including the fear of death, is obviously doomed to severe stress when faced with inevitable losses in life.

A stronger fear may be observed in a child who has experienced the loss of a loved one or beloved pet.

What to do to help a child and save him from fear

Even when the baby starts talking about death at an early age, the main rule for parents is not to dissemble. In other words, if grief has occurred in the family, it is not necessary to say that the old relative fell asleep soundly - the child may begin to be afraid to fall asleep. It is also wrong to call death a long journey - the baby will wait and eventually wonder who is to blame for the fact that a loved one is absent for a long time. By the way, it is likely that he will blame himself: "I did not learn my lessons, so he does not return." And this is already fertile ground for the development of complexes.

You need to talk with a child about death without guile

All words and actions of adults should be coordinated and aimed at supporting the crumbs in the process of growing up.

1. Any fear is a weakness of the nervous system, and it is only being formed in young children. So try to protect the baby from stress (quarrels in which he is even just an observer, watching TV is not useful under any circumstances, reading horror films, etc.). At the same time, your warmth, care and attention will make the child feel protected, having support in the face of his parents.
2. Don't gloss over the topic. That is, you should not avoid talking about death, no matter how unpleasant it may be for you. If grief has occurred in the family, and it is difficult to talk about the loss, ask loved ones to answer the baby's questions. The fact is that by discussing his fear, the little one gets used to it and ceases to be afraid.
3. Do not discuss your feelings about death in front of your children. And even if it seems to you that the child does not hear it. In any case, he feels all the emotions and tries them on himself. Remember: as soon as you complain about a migraine, a sympathetic little one starts a “severe headache” within a few hours.
4. Give your child new experiences to distract him. It can be a trip to the zoo, a trip to an amusement park, an entertainment center. However, be careful: too much of a good thing is also bad, that is, overexcitation will not improve the state of the baby's psyche.
5. Explain. The most correct interpretations of death would be old age or a very serious incurable disease.
6. Do not leave your child alone with fear. This means that during the manifestation of a phobia, you should not send the baby to a summer health camp (even at sea, he will not improve his psyche!), If possible, it is better to refuse to go to the hospital (most children associate this institution with unpleasant sensations).
7. Aim your child for the future. In other words, dream with the little one about who he will become, what he will become, about his family, children. And be sure to speak and make plans for the present.
8. Be prepared to continue to struggle with related problems. Usually the fear of death is accompanied by a fear of darkness, closed space, loneliness. If you notice manifestations of these phobias in a child, then be sure to take care of their elimination.

Ways to deal with fear

For a child, the complex concept of the finiteness of life does not have the philosophical meaning that is characteristic of an adult understanding. So a simple explanation of the meaning of the word in the fight against fear is clearly not enough.

It is not worth explaining to a child the philosophical meaning of the course and finiteness of life, it is better to do it at his level.

There are several techniques that child psychologists recommend for overcoming the fear of death in a child:

• drawings. Have your child visualize their fear. And then, together with him, tear the picture into small pieces, burn it in an ashtray;
• fairy tale therapy. For starters, it’s worth reading Andersen’s fairy tales that touch on the topic of passing away: “The Little Mermaid”, “Angel”, “Red Shoes”, “Something”. It also makes sense to turn to stories composed by fairy tale therapists that are dedicated to getting rid of fear due to specific losses, for example, the death of a mother;
  

  High, high in the mountains was Green Lake. The water has always been clean and cool. Fish and frogs lived in this mountain lake. The fish had golden and silver scales, and the frogs had a beautiful green skin, exactly the same as the color of the water in the lake.
  But the most beautiful and greenest skin was that of a little frog named Kva-simka. Five days ago, Kva-simka turned from a small tadpole into a real frog, but he already knew how to croak well and jump high. Grandmother, dad and mom were very proud of the little frog and told everyone around how smart and good he was. Kva-Simka also loved his grandmother, father and mother very much and tried to be obedient and well-mannered. It was the most friendly frog family on the lake.
  Living on the lake was fun and peaceful. True, sometimes the wind blew up on the lake, raising dangerous waves, but then all the adult frogs and small frogs jumped out of the water and pressed against large stones so that they would not be carried away by the wave into the middle of the reservoir. One night there was a very strong wind. He not only raised high and dangerous waves, but also tore off large stones in the mountains, which quickly rolled down to the lake. Almost all the frogs and frogs, as always, jumped out of the lake and clung to the stones, but a few frogs did not have time to do this, and a large stone fell on them from the mountain.
  During the wind, no one noticed what happened. And only when the wind died down, little Kva-Simka realized that his mother was nowhere to be found. He began to jump along the shore of the lake and call her, but mother did not respond. Suddenly, Kva-Simka saw a large stone that had fallen from a mountain, and a thin ray of golden light streaming from under it. The frog froze, he was scared and interested, his little heart was ready to jump out of his chest. The beam got thicker and bigger until it finally turned into a frog. Kva-Simka immediately recognized his mother, but she was not the same as always. Her skin glowed with silver and gold instead of the usual green. And wings grew on her back - just like those of large butterflies, beautiful and multi-colored. Kva-Simka's mother looked like a sorceress.
  - Mom, is that you? - the frog asked uncertainly.
  “Yes, my dear,” the sorceress replied.
  - What happened to you, mom? Why are you golden? Why did you grow wings?
  “I have turned into an angel and now I must fly high into the sky.
  “I don't want you to be an angel. I won't let you! cried the frog and wept bitterly.
  - Don't cry, Kva-Simka. It is a great success after death to turn into an angel, and not just lie under a large stone, - the mother angel reassured the frog.
  - And what about me? Who will love me? - did not calm down Kva-Simka.
  “I will love you in heaven, but on earth you are loved by your grandmother, and dad, and your friends, and many more frogs will love you.
  “And when will I see you again?” - Kva-Simka asked in a calm voice.
  - I will come to you in a dream, and we will play and have fun together. I will also smile at you from behind a cloud, but this will be our secret with you. And now it's time for you to return to your grandmother and father, and I must fly away. Goodbye, my beloved son.
  “Goodbye, mommy,” Kva-Simka answered and sadly wandered home. But suddenly a mischievous breeze knocked the frog off its paws and pulled it onto its back. Kva-Simka accidentally looked at the sky and saw an angel mother smiling at him from behind a cloud. The frog smiled back at her, quickly jumped up on its paws and happily galloped to grandma and dad. He had a big secret that only he and his mom angel knew about.

• dreams under an umbrella. Quite often, children who are afraid of death have nightmares at night. True, experts say that 1-2 terrible visions per month in childhood is the norm. And yet, help to exclude dreams of such content is necessary. Tell your kid a story about Ole Lukoye, make an umbrella out of cardboard and decorate it with colored appliqués. Every time you put your child to bed, open an umbrella over him so that the baby only has good, fabulous and colorful dreams.

Fairy tale therapy is a very effective way to deal with children's fears.

1. You can't laugh at a phobia. Even if the baby's ideas about death are comical, in no case show it to the child. Otherwise, the baby will no longer be sure that you take him seriously.
2. You can not call the baby a coward or punish for showing interest. Many children at the age of 5-8 begin to draw images of death. This is a normal reaction of consciousness to what worries at the moment: it's just easier for the child to visualize the problem - this way it ceases to be insoluble for him.
3. It is impossible to constantly talk about death, diagnoses-prognoses for acquaintances (and not acquaintances) of patients.
4. You can not limit the freedom of the child. He should spend a lot of time surrounded by peers - it's easier to get distracted.
5. You can’t watch films with bloody or tragic scenes in the presence of a baby - even in a dream, the baby perceives this negativity.
6. You should not take a child under adolescence (12 years old) to a funeral.

Fear of death in children: how to behave to parents - video

I was immortal.
four years
I was careless.
For I did not know about the future death,
For I did not know that my age is not eternal.

(S. Marshak)

The first children's "why?" and why?"

Who among us was not surprised by these first children's "why?", this curiosity, this desire of children to get to the bottom of the essence. “Why is the wind blowing?”, “Why is the grass green and the sun is round?”, “Why are the leaves on the trees green in summer and yellow in autumn?”, “Why did the frog eat the mosquito?”, “Where do children come from?”.

And many "why?" easily turn into "why?". “Why does the wind blow?”, “Why do the leaves turn yellow?”, “Why does my grandmother have wrinkles?”, “Why is she getting old?”.

The anthropomorphism of the child's thinking leads to the fact that in everything he tries to find some kind of explicit or hidden meaning. Hence these endless "why?" and why?".

At first, they surprise and delight with their naivety. Then they start to tire: is there always enough patience to explain everything? Especially when difficult questions arise. They begin to annoy with their endless persistence. What we take for granted, in the mouth of a child suddenly requires an explanation. And we find it difficult, we ourselves are not ready for these questions. And that's why we get angry. Much of what seemed obvious to us turns out to be not so obvious, but requires explanation. Simple answers are not so simple.

Mom, do all people die?
- Yes.
- And we?
We will die too.
- It is not true. Say you're kidding.

He cried so vigorously and pitifully that his mother, frightened, began to assure that she was joking.

A child awakens our thought, and awakening is not always pleasant, because it deprives us of many illusions. Not immediately, the child himself will understand that it would be better not to ask many questions. It would be easier to live. Why? Because they don't have answers.

Why does Grandma have wrinkles?
Because she's old.
- And when she becomes young, she will not have wrinkles?
- Grandmother used to be young, but now she is old. And there will be no more young.
- Why?
- Because all people are young first, and then old.
- And then?
- And then they die.
- Why do they die?

Here is your dead end. What is the answer to such a question?

Will you and dad be old too?
- Yes.
- I don't want you to be old.
- Why?
Because I don't want you to die.
- Well, it won't be soon, don't think about it.
- I want you to be always with me, - there are tears in my eyes.
- We will always be with you. - I want to console the child: it is difficult to resist the temptation to inspire an illusion, at least temporarily.

And one late evening, a piercing cry is heard from the children's room. In fear, you rush to help:

What happened, Anechka, what's wrong with you?
- Scary.
- What are you afraid of?
- I don't want to be old.
But it won't be soon, don't think about it.
- So I will grow, grow ... I will go to the senior group ... Then to school ... Then to the institute ... Then I will work ... Then I will grow old and die! I don't want, I don't want to die!
- Do not be afraid, daughter, everything will be fine, you will live a long, long time.
- And then?..

Mother's affectionate hands and kisses are the most convincing arguments, the most reliable consolation.

When I grow up, I will become a doctor and come up with a cure for old age. And granny will become young again, and I will be young.
- Okay, Anechka, calm down.

How old is Ana? - Four years. How did these ideas about the finiteness of existence penetrate into her consciousness, and where does this passionate need to stop time come from? It is difficult to imagine at this age a sense of the fluidity of time. Most likely, the reason is different. In the feeling of one's existence, in the feeling of oneself. And the fear of non-existence. Fear of death at the age of three to five is a symptom of awakening self-consciousness. The very feeling of self becomes a need. And the fear of not feeling oneself easily turns into the fear of death. It is no coincidence, apparently, that children do not like to go to bed, and therefore they have to be persuaded to go "bye-bye." And the most convincing arguments are arguments like: "tomorrow will be a day again." Anya, when she was 3 years old, often began to cry in the evening, seeing the darkened sky, twilight, and screamed, screamed: "I don't want to sleep! You won't put me to sleep?" And fell asleep for 2-3 hours with tears.

Falling asleep, the child loses self-awareness, and this is so similar to death, albeit temporary. Therefore, probably, bouts of fear of death occur before going to bed. The events of the day go out of consciousness, the world plunges into darkness. There remains a weak flame of self-awareness, in it the whole world, all my "I". Now it will go out, and I will go out. Tomorrow is beyond the horizon of consciousness. It ceases to be reality. Only one reality remains - the feeling of one's self. It is about to disappear. And I will disappear... Probably, this is what happens when people die... It's scary... Mom!!

The fear of non-existence is what a child of 3-5 years old is primarily afraid of. But what does nonexistence mean for a child at this time? Related to this are other fears that often visit a child at this age. Most often it is fear of darkness, loneliness, closed space .

How does the fear of the dark manifest itself? The life of a child is the life of his "I". And the less its fullness, the less it is, the closer to disappearance, to death. He sees the house, the trees, the car, his mother... This very vision is the content of his "I". And suddenly... Darkness... He doesn't see, he doesn't feel, his self-consciousness narrowed, almost empty. In this darkness, darkness, you can dissolve, disappear, disappear without a trace. From there, threatening images can always suddenly appear. From darkness, as from emptiness, fantasies are born more easily. Why not death?

What about loneliness? How not to be afraid of him?! "I" is not just "I", it is a whole world of what I see, hear. "I" is my mom, dad, brother or sister, friends, grandmother, just acquaintances. And if they are not? My self-awareness narrows again, shrinks to a small bird of my "I", which is about to be lost in this huge empty world, ready to swallow me. As you can see, again the threat of non-existence.

Alas, how much we do not know about the child! He loves to play, of course. But how often does he play involuntarily. "Go play," we say to him, wanting to get rid of his annoying communication, wanting to take a break from him. And he goes and plays, escaping from evil boredom, hiding from the terrifying emptiness. The child becomes attached to a doll, a hamster, toys, because for the time being he has nothing else. As the well-known Polish educator and physician Janusz Korczak rightly noted, "a prisoner and an old man become attached to the same thing, because they have nothing."

How much we do not hear in a child's soul. We hear how the girl teaches the doll the rules of good manners, how she frightens her and scolds her; and we don’t hear how she complains to her in bed about those around her, confides in a whisper of worries, failures, dreams:

What can I tell you, doll! But do not tell anyone.
- You are a good dog, I'm not angry with you, you didn't do anything bad to me.

This loneliness of the child endows the doll with a soul. The life of a child is not a paradise, but a drama.

Now about the fear of closed space. Its psychological impact is similar to that of the fear of darkness and loneliness. It is no coincidence that all three fears usually appear together, and one gives rise to another. An unanswered cry for help, crying, despair, horror seize the child, becoming a strong emotional shock.

At 6 years old, boys and girls may be afraid of terrible dreams and death in their sleep. Moreover, the very fact of understanding death as an irreparable misfortune, the termination of life often occurs in a dream: "I was walking in the zoo, I went to the lion's cage, and the cage was open, the lion rushed at me and ate it." A five-year-old boy, waking up in fear, rushes to his father and, clinging to him, sobbing, says: "I was swallowed by a crocodile ...". And, of course, the ubiquitous Baba Yaga, who continues to chase children in her sleep, catch them and throw them into the stove.

At the age of 5-8 years, as the psychotherapist A.I. Zakharov noted, the fear of death often becomes more generalized. This is due to the development of abstract thinking, awareness of the category of time and space. The fear of closed space is associated with the impossibility of leaving it, overcoming it, getting out of it. Feelings of hopelessness and despair appearing at the same time are motivated by an instinctively sharpened fear of being buried alive, i.e. fear of death.

At 5-8 years old, children are especially sensitive to the threat of illness, misfortune, and death. Already there are questions like: "Where did everything come from?", "Why do people live?". At the age of 7-8 years, according to A.I. Zakharov, there is a maximum number of fears of death in children. Why?

It is often during these years that children begin to realize that human life is not endless: a grandmother, grandfather, or one of the familiar adults is dying. One way or another, the child feels that death is inevitable.

The fear of death presupposes a certain maturity of feelings, their depth, and therefore is expressed in emotionally sensitive and impressionable children prone to abstract thinking. It is terrible to "be nothing", i.e. not to live, not to exist, not to feel, to be dead. With a dramatically sharpened fear of death, the child feels completely defenseless. He can sadly blame his mother: "Why did you give birth to me, I don't care to die."

Of course, the fear of death in a dramatic form is not manifested in all children. As a rule, children cope with such experiences on their own. But only if there is a cheerful atmosphere in the family, if the parents do not talk endlessly about illnesses, that someone has died and that misfortune can also happen to him (the child).

There is no need to be afraid of the child's questions about death, no need to react painfully to them. His interest in this topic, in most cases, is purely cognitive (where does everything come from and where does it disappear?). Veresaev recorded, for example, the following conversation:

"- You know, mom, I think people are always the same: they live, live, then they die. They will be buried in the ground. And then they will be born again.
- What are you, Glebochka, talking nonsense. Think how could it be? They will bury a big man, and a small one will be born.
- Well! Still like peas! Here is such a big one. Even taller than me. And then they will plant it in the ground - it will begin to grow and become big again.

Or another informative question on the same topic. Three-year-old Natasha does not play, does not jump. The face expresses anguished thought.
- Natasha, what are you thinking about?
- Who will bury the last person?

A business, practical question: who will bury the dead when the funeral directors will be in the grave?

The information received about the death often does not apply to oneself. As soon as the child is convinced of the inevitability of death for everything that exists, he hurries to immediately assure himself that he himself will be immortal forever. On the bus, a round-eyed boy of about four and a half looks at the funeral procession and says with pleasure:
Everyone will die, but I will stay.

Or another conversation, now mothers and daughters.
- Mom, - says four-year-old Anka, - all people die. So someone will have to put the vase (urn) of the last person in its place. Let it be me, okay?

The reversibility of death may be allowed: "Grandma, will you die, and then come to life again?". Or...

Grandma died. They will bury her now, but three-year-old Nina is not too sad:
- Nothing! She will climb from this hole into another, lie down, lie down and recover!

But it is not far from curiosity to fear. Here is how, for example, K. Chukovsky describes the approximate evolution of ideas about death among his great-granddaughter Mashenka Kostyukova:
“First, a girl, then an aunt, then a grandmother, and then a girl again. Here I had to explain that very old grandparents die, they are buried in the ground.
Then she politely asked the grandmother:
- Why haven't you been buried in the ground yet?
At the same time, a fear of death arose (at three and a half years):
- I will not die! I don't want to be in a coffin!
- Mom, you will not die, I will be bored without you! (And tears.)
However, by the age of four she came to terms with this.

Like other children's fears, over time, with the right attitude on the part of adults, the fear of death disappears or dulls.

Years, events, people... But the dramatic curiosity returns again and again, changing its form and intensity.
- What is it, why, why?

The child often does not dare to ask. Feels small, lonely and helpless before the struggle of mysterious forces. Sensitive, like a smart dog, he looks around and looks into himself. Adults know something, hide something. They themselves are not what they pretend to be, and they demand from him that he be not what he really is.

Adults have their own lives, and adults get angry when children want to look into it; they want the child to be gullible, and rejoice if, with a naive question, he betrays that he does not understand.

Who am I in this world and why?

The fear of death is often embodied in the fear of “not being the one” about whom they speak well, who they love, respect. Life is no longer understood simply as seeing, hearing, communicating, but as living in accordance with certain social norms. And failure to comply with these norms, non-compliance with the requirements may be perceived by the child, figuratively speaking, as "the death of a good boy." The need for self-preservation is no longer recognized only as a need for self-perception, but as a need to "be good." And for a child, sometimes being a "bad boy" is already the death of a "good boy." And what is the worst death? The death of me as an individual, or the death of the "good boy" in me?

Concrete manifestations of the fear of "being wrong" are fears of not being in time, being late, doing the wrong thing, doing something wrong, being punished, etc.

Soar over the child and magical images of death. This is due to the widespread tendency of children of this age to the so-called magical imagination. They often believe in "fatal" coincidences, "mysterious" phenomena. This is the age when stories about vampires, ghosts, the Black Hand and the Queen of Spades seem to be fascinating.

The black hand for fearful children is the omnipresent and penetrating hand of the dead man. The Queen of Spades is an insensitive, cruel, cunning and insidious person who can cast spells, turn into something or make her helpless and lifeless. To a greater extent, her image personifies everything that is somehow connected with the fatal outcome of events, fate, fate, predictions. However, the Queen of Spades can directly play the role of the ghost of death, which is already noted in children of 6 years of age, mainly in girls.

So, one six-year-old girl after a children's sanatorium, where she had heard enough stories before going to bed, was terribly afraid of the Queen of Spades. As a result, the girl avoided the dark, slept with her mother, did not let her go and constantly asked: "Won't I die? Will nothing happen to me?"

At the age of 8-11, the Queen of Spades can play the role of a kind of vampire, sucking blood from people and depriving them of their lives. Here is a fairy tale composed by a girl of 10 years old: "There lived three brothers. They were homeless and somehow went into one house, where a portrait of the Queen of Spades hung over the beds. The brothers ate and went to bed. At night, the Queen of Spades came out of the portrait. She went into the room first brother and drank his blood. Then she did the same with the second and third brother. When the brothers woke up, all three had a sore throat under the chin. "Maybe we should go to the doctor?" asked the older brother. But the younger one suggested taking a walk. When they returned from a walk, the rooms were black and bloody. They went to bed again, and the same thing happened at night. Then in the morning the brothers decided to go to the doctor. On the way, two brothers died. The younger brother came to the clinic, but it turned out to be a day off. At night, the younger brother did not sleep and noticed how the Queen of Spades came out of the portrait, he grabbed a knife and killed her! Children's fear of the Queen of Spades sounds defenseless in the face of imaginary mortal danger.

As a rule, with age, the child ceases to experience fear. New impressions, school worries give him the opportunity to escape from fears, to forget them. The child grows, and the fear of death, like other fears, changes its character, its coloring. A teenager is already a socially oriented person. He wants to be among his own kind. And this can turn into a fear of being rejected, an outcast. For many teenagers, this is unbearable. True, this problem does not exist in overly closed and, as a result, non-contact children, as well as in some self-oriented adolescents. But this is not typical.

Great in adolescence is the need to be oneself, "to be oneself among others." It gives rise to the desire for self-improvement. But this is sometimes inseparable from anxiety, anxiety, fear of not being yourself, i.e. someone else, at best - impersonal, at worst - who has lost self-control, power over his feelings and reason. In such fears one can easily recognize the familiar echoes of the fear of death. The fear of death also sounds in the fear of misfortune, misfortune, something irreparable.

Girls are more sensitive in the sphere of interpersonal relations, they have more such social fears than boys. In general, fears of death are more often manifested in emotionally sensitive, impressionable adolescents. Of course, for most teenagers the problem is not so acute, and therefore there is no reason for excessive dramatization. But nevertheless with pathological acuteness, the fear of death can seriously undermine the life-affirming power of the individual, the creative potential of development. Therefore, you should not brush aside such fears in a child. They should not be allowed to grow too much, because in adolescence they can turn into stable personality traits that undermine activity and self-confidence.

Time passes, and difficult questions arise again. Now in my youth. "Who am I and why am I in this world?" The need for life self-determination, accompanied by many "why?", "For what?" and "why?" has a well-defined psychological basis.

The fluidity of time. How often do we notice it? And when do we notice? The first sensations of moving time arise precisely in youth, when you suddenly begin to understand its irreversibility.

In this regard, the problem of death is often exacerbated again. Comprehension of eternity, infinity begins. And at the same time, sometimes fear of them. It is based on the emerging concept of life. There is a feeling of fluidity and irreversibility of time. Personal time is experienced as something living, concrete. The young man is faced with the problem of the finiteness of his existence. Here I live. Life is filled with different events: books, entertainment, school, dances, dates... But they leave. Other events follow. But they leave too. They leave irrevocably. It's not that scary yet. All life is ahead!.. But here it mentally scrolls on the verge of consciousness and subconsciousness, it flashes before the inner eye in a matter of moments. So, what is next? But nothing. Emptiness. And you will never appear in this life again, you will disappear forever, like a grain of sand in the cosmos of the universe: you appeared, flew and disappeared into oblivion.

There are attempts to philosophize on the theme of death. Personal life seems to be an immeasurably small grain of sand in the vast ocean of the cosmos of universal life. And from the fact that this grain of sand can get lost in this general stream, it becomes scary. It is terrible that my life will end, the world will continue to live. For a very long time... maybe forever... But I will never return to this world. Never ever!!! Scary...

The egocentrism of the emerging, and therefore immature self-consciousness rebels. Rebellion against the feeling of a grain of sand. And he is looking, looking for a way out ... But he does not find ... The world again and again returns to consciousness in the form of a starry sky, black-black starry space. And in this space you fly to infinity, bad infinity, into emptiness.

No, outside this cosmos, ordinary, everyday life flows with its deeds and worries, joys and sorrows. And this is especially annoying. But you are already forever doomed to this black, endlessly empty space. And in the temple knocks: "Never, never! Why? Why is the world so unfair?! I don't want to leave, I don't want to die. I want the light of life, not the darkness of death. I want to live!" Tears run down my cheeks from helplessness and despair. And the fact that it will be very, very long time does not reassure. The image is timeless, philosophical. And it is not reality that frightens, but the thought itself, the image, the principle. For emotions, for fear, there is no difference - it is not so important. And only one thing remains: to survive, to wait, to be distracted, although this is not easy. Or just fall asleep... Although the thought, the image is not released, constantly returning and returning, like obsessive ideas. And, like a masochist, you mentally chew over and over again, painfully worry ...

And you imagine, you imagine that one day, closing your eyes, you will never open them again and you will not see the sun, that nothing will happen to you, that this dear Earth will keep spinning and spinning for centuries, and you will feel what is happening nothing more than a simple clod of earth, that this short, shimmering, bittersweet life is my only glimpse of existence, my only touch on it in the endless ocean of endless time ... You feel it like some kind of black gloomy sorcery.

In adolescence, one way or another, images of immortality arise. It is difficult to come to terms with the fact that you will someday leave this life forever into non-existence, and therefore the fantasy is easily instilled in the mind that later, after some time, you will reappear, perhaps as another child. Naive? Yes. But if you really do not want to die, you can believe.

To part with the idea of ​​personal immortality is difficult and painful. And therefore the belief in physical immortality does not disappear immediately. Despair, the deadly actions of a teenager are not just a demonstration and test of their strength and courage, but in the literal sense of the word, a game with death, a test of fate with absolute certainty that everything will work out, get away with it.

"One of the features of youth is the conviction that you are immortal, and not in some unreal, abstract sense, but literally: you will never die!" The validity of this idea of ​​Yu. Olesha is confirmed by many diaries and memoirs. "No! This is not true: I do not believe that I will die young, I do not believe that I should die at all - I feel incredibly eternal," says the 18-year-old hero Francois Mauriac.

In most cases, the question is not so dramatic. But this very experience of the fluidity of time and awareness of the finiteness of one's existence, apparently, is universal. And it has its own meaning. If you appeared in this life and leave it irrevocably, why did you come into the world? Why are you given this life? This immortal has nowhere to hurry. He will still have time in this life: to learn, and to work, and to have fun. Only a person who has realized the finiteness of his existence begins to think about its meaning, begins to search for his place in this life.

It is not easy to present your life, the temporal perspective of life as a whole, as an insight, in a single act of contemplation. And they come to this idea in their youth not immediately and not all. But... There are young men, and there are many of them, who do not want to think about the future, postponing all difficult questions and responsible decisions for "later". They are trying to prolong the era of fun and carelessness. Youth is a wonderful, amazing age that adults remember with tenderness and sadness. But all is well in its time. Eternal youth is eternal spring, eternal flowering, but also eternal barrenness.

"The Eternal Youth" is not at all lucky. Much more often this is a person who failed to solve the problem of self-determination in time and take root in creative activity. His variability and impulsiveness may seem attractive against the background of everyday earthiness and everyday life of many of his peers, but this is not so much freedom as restlessness. You can sympathize with him rather than envy him. The need for immortality gives rise to the need for self-determination. The question of the meaning of life is posed globally in early youth, and a universal answer suitable for all is awaited. “So many questions, problems torment and worry me,” writes sixteen-year-old Lena. “What am I for? Why was I born? Why do I live? From early childhood, the answer to these questions was clear to me: to benefit others. But now I I think what is it to "benefit"? "Shine to others, I burn myself." This, of course, is the answer. The goal of a person is to "shine to others." He gives his life to work, love, friendship. People need a person, he not in vain does he walk the earth." The girl does not notice that in her reasoning, in fact, she does not move forward: the principle of "shine to others" is as abstract as the desire to "be useful." But the emergence of questions, as the well-known Soviet psychologist S. L. Rubinshtein emphasized, is the first sign of the beginning work of thought and the emerging understanding.

Other questions come. Typical of them: "Who to be?" In dreams about the future, in professional intentions, first of all, the need to be significant is reflected as a concrete manifestation of the need for immortality. Professional plans in early youth are often vague dreams that have nothing to do with practical activities. These plans are more focused on the social prestige of the profession than on their own individuality. Hence the characteristic overestimation of the level of claims, the need to see oneself as certainly outstanding, great.

“Every person,” writes I.S. Turgenev, “in his youth experienced an era of “genius”, enthusiastic arrogance, friendly gatherings and circles ... He is ready to talk about society, about social issues, about science; but society, too, like science, exists for him - not he for them.. Such an era of theories that are not conditioned by reality, and therefore do not want to be applied, dreamy and indefinite impulses, an excess of forces that are going to overthrow mountains, but for the time being they do not want or cannot move and straw - such an epoch is necessarily repeated in the development of everyone; but only that of us really deserves the name of a person who will be able to get out of this magic circle and go further, forward, towards his goal.

The young man does not immediately and not simply come to the need to think about the means to achieve the goal. A youthful tendency to philosophize prevents him from turning his gaze to everyday affairs, which should bring the realization of a dream closer. However, the notion that the future "will come by itself" is the attitude of the consumer, not the creator.

Until a young man finds himself in practical activity, it may seem petty and insignificant to him and be identified with everyday routine. Even Hegel noted this contradiction: “Having hitherto been occupied only with general subjects and working only for himself, the young man who is now turning into a husband must, entering into practical life, become active for others and take care of trifles. And although this is completely in the order of things, - for if it is necessary to act, then it is inevitable to go over to particulars - however, for a person, the beginning of studying these particulars can still be very painful, and the impossibility of directly realizing his ideals can plunge him into hypochondria. This hypochondria, no matter how insignificant many people had it, - hardly anyone managed to avoid it. The later it takes possession of a person, the more severe its symptoms become. In weak natures, it can last a lifetime. In this painful state, a person does not want to give up his subjectivity, cannot overcome his aversion to reality, which can easily turn into a real incapacity.

The desire for immortality encourages activity. And in this sense, the fear of death, moderately expressed, not reaching pathological sharpness, plays a positive role in adolescence. plays a positive role in adolescence.

There is a fear of death, both of parents (86.6%) and one's own (83.3%). Moreover, in girls, the fear of death is more common than in boys (64% and 36%, respectively). A small number of children (6.6%) experience fear before falling asleep and fear of big streets. Mostly girls experience this fear. In girls of 6 years, the fears of the first group (fears of blood, injections, pain, war, attacks, water, doctors, heights, diseases, fires, animals) are also most clearly represented in comparison with boys of the same age. Of the fears of the second group, girls are most characterized by fears of loneliness, darkness, and of the fears of the third group - the fear of parents, being late for school, punishment. Compared to girls, boys have the following fears more pronounced: fear of depth (50%), certain people (46.7%), fire (42.9%), enclosed space (40%). In general, girls are much more cowardly than boys, but this is hardly genetically set: for the most part, this is a consequence of the fact that girls are allowed to be afraid and mothers fully support girls in their fears.

6-year-old children have already developed an understanding that in addition to good, kind and sympathetic parents, there are also bad ones. The bad ones are not only those who treat the child unfairly, but also those who quarrel and cannot find agreement among themselves. We find reflection in age-typical fears of devils as violators of social rules and established foundations, and at the same time as representatives of the other world. Obedient children who have experienced a feeling of guilt characteristic of age in violation of the rules and regulations in relation to authoritative persons significant to them are more susceptible to the fear of devils.

At the age of 5, transient obsessive repetitions of “indecent” words are characteristic, at the age of 6, children are overcome by anxiety and doubts about their future: “What if I won’t be beautiful?”, “What if no one will marry me?”, in the 7-year-old - suspiciousness is observed: "Won't we be late?", "Will we go?", "Will you buy it?"

Age-related manifestations of obsession, anxiety and suspiciousness themselves disappear in children if the parents are cheerful, calm, self-confident, and also if they take into account the individual and gender characteristics of their child.

Punishment for obscene words should be avoided by patiently explaining their unacceptability and at the same time providing additional opportunities to relieve nervous tension in the game. It also helps to establish friendly relations with children of the opposite sex, and here you can not do without the help of parents.

Anxious expectations of children are dispelled by calm analysis, authoritative explanation and persuasion. With regard to suspiciousness, the best thing is not to reinforce it, switch the child's attention, run around with him, play, cause physical fatigue and constantly express your own firm confidence in the certainty of the events taking place.

Divorce of parents in children of older preschool age has a greater adverse effect on boys than on girls. The lack of influence of the father in the family or his absence can make it most difficult for boys to form sex-appropriate communication skills with peers, cause self-doubt, a sense of powerlessness and doom in the face of danger, albeit imaginary, but filling consciousness.

So, a 6-year-old boy from an incomplete family (his father left after a divorce) was terribly afraid of Zmey Gorynych. "He breathes - that's all," - this is how he explained his fear. By "everything" he meant death. No one knows when the Serpent Gorynych can fly up, rising from the depths of his subconscious, but it is clear that he can suddenly capture the imagination of a boy defenseless in front of him and paralyze his will to resist.

The presence of a constant imaginary threat indicates the absence of psychological protection, not formed due to the lack of adequate father influence. The boy does not have a defender who could kill the Serpent Gorynych, and from whom he could take an example, as from the fabulous Ilya Muromets.

Or let us cite the case of a 5-year-old boy who was afraid of "everything in the world", was helpless and at the same time declared: "I am like a man." He owed his infantility to an anxious and overprotective mother who wanted to have a girl and did not take into account his desire for independence in the first years of his life. The boy was drawn to his father and strove to be like him in everything. But the father was removed from the upbringing by the domineering mother, blocking all his attempts to exert any influence on his son.

The impossibility of identifying with the role of a tight-fisted and non-authoritative father in the presence of a restless and overprotective mother - this is the family situation that contributes to the destruction of activity and self-confidence in boys.

One day we drew attention to a confused, shy and timid boy of 7 years old who could not draw a whole family in any way, despite our request. He drew separately either himself or his father, not realizing that the drawing should include both his mother and his older sister. He also could not choose the role of father or mother in the game and become himself in it. The impossibility of identification with the father and his low authority were due to the fact that the father constantly came home tipsy and immediately went to bed. He referred to men "living behind the closet" - inconspicuous, quiet, disconnected from family problems and not involved in raising children.

The boy could not be himself either, since his domineering mother, having been defeated by her father, who was leaving her influence, tried to take revenge in the fight for her son, who, according to her, looked like a despised husband in everything and was just as harmful , lazy, stubborn. It must be said that the son was unwanted, and this constantly affected the attitude of his mother towards him, who was strict with the emotionally sensitive boy, endlessly reprimanded him and punished him. In addition, she overprotected her son, kept her under vigilant control and stopped any manifestations of independence.

It is not surprising that he soon became "harmful", in the mother's mind, because he tried to somehow express himself, and to her this reminded him of his father's former activity. This is what frightened the mother, who does not tolerate any disagreements, seeking to impose her will and subjugate everyone. She, like the Snow Queen, sat on a throne of principles, commanding, pointing, emotionally inaccessible and cold, not understanding the spiritual needs of her son and treating him like a servant. The husband began to drink at one time as a sign of protest, defending himself from his wife with "alcoholic non-existence."

In a conversation with the boy, we found not only age-related fears, but also many fears coming from the previous age, including punishment from the mother, darkness, loneliness and closed space. The most pronounced was the fear of loneliness, and this is understandable. He has no friend and protector in the family, he is an emotional orphan with living parents.

Unjustified severity, cruelty of the father in relations with children, physical punishment, ignoring spiritual needs and self-esteem also lead to fears.

As we have seen, the forced or conscious substitution of the male role in the family by a domineering mother not only does not contribute to the development of self-confidence in boys, but also leads to the emergence of lack of independence, dependence, helplessness, which are breeding grounds for the propagation of fears that inhibit activity and interfere with self-affirmation. .

In the absence of identification with the mother, girls may also lose self-confidence. But unlike boys, they become more anxious than fearful. If, in addition, the girl cannot express love for her father, then cheerfulness decreases, and anxiety is supplemented by suspiciousness, which leads in adolescence to a depressive shade of mood, a feeling of worthlessness, uncertainty of feelings, desires.

At 5-7 years old, they are often afraid of terrible dreams and death in a dream. Moreover, the very fact of realizing death as an irreparable misfortune, the termination of life occurs most often in a dream: "I walked in the zoo, went to the lion's cage, and the cage was open, the lion rushed at me and ate" (a reflection associated with the fear of death, fears attacks and animals in a 6-year-old girl), "I was swallowed by a crocodile" (a 6-year-old boy). The symbol of death is the ubiquitous Baba Yaga, who chases children in a dream, catches them and throws them into the stove (in which the fear of fire, associated with the fear of death, is refracted).

Often in a dream, children of this age may dream of separation from their parents, due to the fear of their disappearance and loss. Such a dream is ahead of the fear of the death of parents in primary school age.

Thus, at 5-7 years old, dreams reproduce present, past (Baba Yaga) and future fears. Indirectly, this indicates the greatest saturation of the senior preschool age with fears.

Terrible dreams also reflect the nature of the attitude of parents, adults to children: “I go up the stairs, stumble, start falling down the stairs and just can’t stop, and my grandmother, as luck would have it, takes out newspapers and can’t do anything,” says the girl 7 years, given to the care of a restless and sick grandmother.

A 6-year-old boy, who has a strict father who prepares him for school, told us his dream: “I’m walking down the street and I see Koshchei the Deathless coming towards me, he takes me to school and sets the task: “How much will 2 + 2 be? "Well, of course, I immediately woke up and asked my mother how much it would be 2 + 2, fell asleep again and answered Koshchei that it would be 4." The fear of making a mistake haunts the child even in his sleep, and he seeks support from his mother.

The leading fear of senior preschool age is the fear of death. Its occurrence means the awareness of the irreversibility in space and time of the ongoing age-related changes. The child begins to understand that growing up at some stage marks death, the inevitability of which causes anxiety as an emotional rejection of the rational need to die. One way or another, the child feels for the first time that death is an inevitable fact of his biography. As a rule, children cope with such experiences on their own, but only if the family has a cheerful atmosphere, if the parents do not talk endlessly about illnesses, that someone has died and something can also happen to him (the child) . If the child is already restless, then anxieties of this kind will only increase the age-related fear of death.

Fear of death is a kind of moral and ethical category that indicates a certain maturity of feelings, their depth, and therefore is most pronounced in emotionally sensitive and impressionable children, who also have the ability for abstract, abstract thinking.

The fear of death is relatively more common in girls, which is associated with a more pronounced self-preservation instinct in them, in comparison with boys. But in boys, a more tangible connection can be traced between the fear of death of oneself and subsequently - parents with fears of strangers, unfamiliar faces, starting from 8 months of life, that is, a boy who is afraid of other people will be more prone to fear of death than a girl who does not have such a sharp oppositions.

According to the correlation analysis, the fear of death is closely related to fears of attack, darkness, fairy-tale characters (more active at 3-5 years old), illness and death of parents (older age), terrible dreams, animals, elements, fire, fire and war. .

The last 6 fears are most typical for senior preschool age. They, as previously listed, are motivated by a threat to life in a direct or indirect form. An attack by someone (including animals), as well as a disease, can result in irreparable misfortune, injury, death. The same applies to storm, hurricane, flood, earthquake, fire, conflagration and war as immediate threats to life. This justifies our definition of fear as an affectively sharpened self-preservation instinct.

Under adverse life circumstances, the fear of death contributes to the strengthening of many fears associated with it. So, after the death of her beloved hamster, a 7-year-old girl became whiny, touchy, stopped laughing, could not watch and listen to fairy tales, because she cried bitterly from pity for the heroes and could not calm down for a long time.

The main thing was that she was terribly afraid of dying in her sleep, like a hamster, so she could not fall asleep alone, experiencing spasms in her throat from excitement, asthma attacks and frequent urges to go to the toilet. Remembering how her mother once said in her hearts: “It would be better for me to die,” the girl began to fear for her life, as a result of which the mother was forced to sleep with her daughter.

As we can see, the case with the hamster fell just at the age maximum of the fear of death, actualized it and led to an exorbitant growth in the imagination of an impressionable girl.

At one of the receptions, we observed a capricious and stubborn, according to his mother, 6-year-old boy who could not be left alone, could not stand darkness and heights, was afraid of an attack, that he would be stolen, that he would be lost in the crowd. He was afraid of a bear and a wolf even in pictures and because of this he could not watch children's programs. We received complete information about his fears from conversations and games with the boy himself, since for his mother he was just a stubborn child who did not obey her orders - to sleep, not to whine and control himself.

By analyzing his fears, we wanted to understand what motivates them. The fear of death was not specifically asked about, so as not to draw too much attention to it, but this fear could be unmistakably "calculated" from the complex of associated fears of darkness, confined space, heights, and animals.

In darkness, as in a crowd, one can disappear, dissolve, abyss; height implies the danger of falling; the wolf can bite, and the bear can crush. Consequently, all these fears meant a concrete threat to life, an irreversible loss and disappearance of oneself. Why was the boy so afraid of disappearing?

Firstly, the father left the family a year ago, disappearing, in the child's mind, forever, because the mother did not allow him to meet. But something similar happened before, when the mother, anxious and suspicious by nature, overprotected her son and tried in every possible way to prevent the influence of a determined father on him. However, after the divorce, the child became more unstable in behavior and capricious, at times hyperexcitable "for no reason", was afraid of attacks and stopped being alone. Soon, other fears "sounded" in full force.

Secondly, he has already "disappeared" as a boy, turned into a defenseless and timid creature without a sex. His mother had, in her own words, boyish traits of behavior in childhood, and even now she considered her belonging to the female sex an unfortunate misunderstanding. Like most such women, she passionately wanted to have a daughter, rejecting her son's boyish character traits and not accepting him as a boy. She expressed her credo once and for all like this: "I don't like boys at all!"

In general, this means that she does not like all males, since she considers herself a "man", and, moreover, earns more than her ex-husband. Immediately after marriage, she, as an "emancipated" woman, launched an uncompromising struggle for her "feminine dignity", for the right to single-handedly dispose of the family.

But the husband also claimed a similar role in the family, so a struggle began between the spouses. When the father saw the futility of his attempts to influence his son, he left the family. It was then that the boy developed the need to identify with the male role. The mother began to play the role of the father, but since she was anxious and suspicious and raised her son as a girl, the result of this was only an increase in the fears of the "feminized" boy.

No wonder he was afraid that he would be stolen. His activity, independence and boyish "I" have already been "stolen" from him. The neurotic, morbid state of the boy seemed to tell the mother that she needed to rebuild herself, but she stubbornly did not consider it necessary to do this, continuing to accuse her son of stubbornness.

After 10 years, she came to us again - with complaints about her son's refusal to attend school. This was a consequence of the inflexibility of her behavior and her son's inability to communicate with peers at school.

In other cases, we are faced with the child's fear of being late - for a visit, for kindergarten, etc. At the heart of the fear of being late, of not being in time, is an indefinite and anxious expectation of some kind of misfortune. Sometimes such fear acquires an obsessive, neurotic connotation when children torment their parents with endless questions-doubts like: "Won't we be late?", "Will we have time?", "Will you come?"

Waiting intolerance is manifested in the fact that the child "burns out emotionally" before the onset of some specific, pre-planned event, for example, the arrival of guests, going to the cinema, etc.

Most often, the obsessive fear of being late is inherent in boys with a high level of intellectual development, but with insufficiently expressed emotionality and spontaneity. They are taken care of a lot, controlled, regulated every step by not very young and anxiously suspicious parents. In addition, mothers would prefer to see them as girls, and they treat boyish self-will with emphasized adherence to principles, intolerance and intolerance.

Both parents are characterized by a heightened sense of duty, the difficulty of compromises, combined with impatience and poor tolerance for expectations, maximalism and inflexibility of thinking of the "all or nothing" type. Like their fathers, boys are not self-confident and are afraid not to justify the inflated demands of their parents. Figuratively speaking, boys, with an obsessive fear of being late, are afraid not to catch their boyish train of life, which rushes non-stop from the past to the future, bypassing the bus stop of the present.

The obsessive fear of being late is a symptom of painfully sharpened and fatally insoluble inner restlessness, that is, neurotic anxiety, when the past frightens, the future worries, and the present worries and puzzles.

A neurotic form of expression of the fear of death is the obsessive fear of infection. Usually it is the fear of diseases inspired by adults, from which, according to them, one can die. Such fears fall on the fertile soil of increased age-related sensitivity to fears of death and flourish in the lush color of neurotic fears.

Here's what happened to a 6-year-old girl living with a suspicious grandmother. Once she read (already knew how to read) in a pharmacy that you can’t eat food on which a fly will land. Shocked by such a categorical ban, the girl began to feel guilt and anxiety for his repeated "violations". She was afraid to leave food, it seemed to her that there were some points on its surface, etc.

Overwhelmed by the fear of getting infected and dying from it, she washed her hands endlessly, refused, despite thirst and hunger, to drink and eat at a party. There was tension, stiffness and "confidence in reverse" - obsessive thoughts about impending death from accidentally eating contaminated food. Moreover, the threat of death was perceived literally, as something probable, as a punishment, a punishment for violating the ban.

To be infected with such fears, you need to be psychologically unprotected by your parents and already have a high level of anxiety, backed up by a restless and protective grandmother in everything.

If we do not take such clinical cases, then the fear of death, as already noted, does not sound, but dissolves in fears common for a given age. Nevertheless, it is better not to expose the psyche of emotionally sensitive, impressionable, nervously and somatically weakened children to additional trials, such as an operation to remove the adenoids (there are conservative methods of treatment), painful medical manipulations without special need, separation from their parents and placement for several months in a "health "sanatorium, etc. But this does not mean isolating children at home, creating an artificial environment for them that eliminates any difficulties and levels their own experience of failures and achievements.