Receive monthly newsletters - shopping specials, new articles, and more. Your Child's Fears Think back to things that you were afraid of as a child. All children have fears of one kind or another.
Fear is an emotion like others such as love, happiness, anger, hurt, sadness.
We need emotions to process information that we receive and decide how to respond. Being afraid of fast cars, for example, is something that might protect us from harm. Being afraid of the consequence of a choice that we make prevents us from getting into trouble, and that is the healthy part of an emotion like fear. Fears in young children commonly center on certain animals like snakes or big dogs. Sometimes children are afraid of the dark or of unseen monsters.