Is a Child You Care for Afraid of the Dark?Being afraid of the dark is a very common childhood fear. Here are some fun activities I used with children at an outdoor, overnight camp I worked at with children. We used the following activities to help prepare the children to spend evenings and nights outdoors in the dark. Of course, these activities are so much fun kids that aren't afraid of the dark will love to play them too.
Blindfold Hike: Blindfold the child or children and lead them on a walk. Direct them through simple obstacles allowing to use their hearing, smell, and touch (rather than sight) to explore the environment.
Identify That Smell: Keep the blindfold on the child and hold up fragrant kitchen ingredients up to their nose and see if they can identify the scent. Again, the child is relying on other senses than sight to identify ingredients.
What is It?: Hand common household and outdoor items in the hands of the child to see if they can identify the item with touch. Popular items to use are a shoe, a spoon, an egg, a banana, and anything safe you can think of. The children will beg to play this "game" all the time.
Blindfold Drawings: Keeping the blindfold on have the child draw a house on a piece of paper. Sit the child down on the floor with a crayon and piece of paper placed in front of them. Ask them to draw a square. Then tell them to try to draw a triangle above the square. Ask them to draw a rectangle in lower portion of the square and another rectangle on top of the triangle to make a chimney. Feel free to add clouds and sun too. The outcome is hysterical.
Blindfold Fetch: This is best played with several children to play with teams. Scatter different sized balls around a large room or backyard space in the grass. Blindfold one child per team. Then set a stop watch and instruct the children without a blindfold to direct the child with the blindfold to collect all the balls. The team that collects the most amount of balls at the end of the allotted time wins! Give every child a chance to wear the blindfold.
What tips do you have to share about helping kids that are afraid of the dark?
7 comments:
These are amazingly creative ideas. I've never seen anyone post these fun ideas. Typically articles uggest reading children's books about being afraid of the dark. I like that you listed some games to play during the day can help. I think we should try shadow puppets also. Great ideas of using blindfolds so kids can adjust to using other senses too.
Shoshanna Levy
Greenwich, CT
These are amazingly creative ideas. I've never seen anyone post these fun ideas. Typically articles uggest reading children's books about being afraid of the dark. I like that you listed some games to play during the day can help. I think we should try shadow puppets also. Great ideas of using blindfolds so kids can adjust to using other senses too.
Shoshanna Levy
Greenwich, CT
Brilliant. I only thought to use a night light crack the door open and avoid watching or reading anything frightening.
This is one area that is up to the parents to decide what to do. All the families I have worked for (6) show me what they do. I don't decide if they will use a night light or keep hallway light on.
The parents and kids have that figured out before I ever meet them.
But playing games and reading books about the topic is great. I think any parent would be appreciate and thankful to have a nanny that takes the initiative to help the children with this fear.
Sandra Orange County CA
You've got some great ideas here. Some great ways to encourage kids to have FUN when it's dark and to be less scared. Thanks for an informative post, I enjoyed reading it.
What wonderful idea. Just a thought - some of old (and new) fairytales are very frightening. Years ago, they were read to children but today they're in full color video with sounds. Some of these scare me!!! Ny other observation is that many young children aren't scheduled to take naps anymore and as a result are overly tired which can produce sleeping issues.
According to some studies playing games is good for health. If you want to read more or research a bit you can read it more at "Playing Outdoor Games May Reduce Kid's Risk for Myopia, Study Reveals"
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