When he was young, I was walking around with Joey in town and a dog came barking at us. He hid behind me and I showed him that the dog was harmless. It was an average height daschund who wanted to play with us. I touched its nose then its head and it smelled my hands. Then we became friends. I let Joey pat the dog on the head, but he wouldn’t.

I was not too startled about what happened, but I know that my son had his own fears especially when he’s five years old. At night, he would ask me to stay with him a few minutes until he felt asleep. Children need security from fear and other things that they imagine. They use people they consider as guardians to defend themselves from such fears.
However, I once tried to remove fear from him by showing him that trying something once is not dangerous at all. I explained to him that fear usually rises from a certain irrationality, a fear of the unknown, or something that is not proven, but a pre-emptive judgement or hypothesis already exists.
I told him that what he holds in his mind is a young idea about things outside his own understanding and that he will need to prove that his ideas are true because that is the work of rational people. As I’m aiming to raise the belief of a free thinker, I think this is the best way that you can remove fear from your kids.
Nothing is true without evidence or experience.
-Rose





