2-Year-Old Gets Scared After Discovering Her Own Shadow

Very young children can show fear that stems from a variety of things, even such which would seem totally harmless to only a few years older child. One of these childish phobias is the fear of shadows, most often their own.Show more

The very fear of shadows is associated with the fear of darkness and uncertainty. The mysterious dark moving figure causes the child to cringe, seeing evil monsters in their own silhouette on the ground. The monsters are coming to catch him or her, sometimes waking them up in the middle of the night, afraid to stay alone in a dark room.

The video on the top of the page shows just such an example. The reaction to her own shadow of this adorable 2-year-old may be seen as cute and even funny for adults, but for her, it is a really unpleasant encounter with her own shadow.

No scientific explanation will do in these moments. it is better to leave them for a later age and follow the example of the father in this video. At an early age, it is better to show this phenomenon to the child in a playful form. Dad is explaining to the little girl that this is nothing but a shadow of a little girl, her own shadow for that matter and it is okay if she goes out and touches it. The girl is still afraid, but you can clearly see the wheels in her head turning. She understands that even though the black thing on the ground is imitating her every move, there is nothing scary about it.

If you cannot reproduce the same in your own household, worry not. You can instead play with a flashlight when the shadow under the influence of its light disappears. You can arrange a whole theater of shadows with the help of silhouette figures of the characters familiar to the child. A funny game can be arranged by showing the figures with the help of your hands and let the kid try to make a shadow of some beast or a bird.

You can take your child's favorite toy and show what kind of shadow comes from it. Interesting will be the game, where the shadow of the child should determine from which subject it was formed. On sunny days on the street, you can show the child a sharp contrast between the shady and the sunny sides.

Another simple experiment will be to take a sheet of paper and a clear glass. They need to direct the light from the lamp. Then the child will see that the beam does not pass through the sheet and a shadow appears, and the glass passes light easily. With older children, you can observe how the shadow moves in space and changes its outlines.

Thus, explaining the question to the kid in a language accessible to him, depending on the age, and in a confidential conversation, will help to get rid of the fear, and experiments with older children will not only develop an understanding of the processes and interest in the world around them but will also be an excellent joint family occupation.