A Brief Note On Avoiding The Scariness

Submitted By aandrewscott
Words: 633
Pages: 3

Avoiding the Scariness!
Allen Scott
Old Dominion University

Children are more likely to have anxiety disorders if they are avoiding scary situations, according to the article that I chose to critique. Children are at risk of developing anxiety disorders, or already have them, if they are avoidant of scary situations. Putting scary situations off is another sign of anxiety disorders, according to the article. The article states that, “Children who tried to avoid scary situations at the start of the study were more likely than other children to have anxiety a year later, according to the study published” (Avoiding Scary Situations), but they are never too specific or particular about what exactly is “scaring” the child. The article does, in fact, offer a solution to the issue: teaching the children to face their fears—make them manage the anxiety. Kids need to learn that their fear can be managed, and that they can handle it—that it is not going to overcome them—and that they are going to be okay in the end, alive. They perform cognitive behavior therapy on 25 different children with anxiety disorders, and it actually brought down their “avoidance scores” that they were testing on (Avoiding Scary Situations). Overall, the study was fairly efficient, in my personal opinion. I believe that the research that was conducted was pretty solid, and that the results were sufficient enough to draw conclusions based off of. There was a detail or two that I would have done differently, had it of been my experiment, but I believe that the results were still accurate overall. The research was conducted well and all of the information that was given was considerably accurate.
The major problem that I have with this study is that the parents were asked to score whether or not their child avoided “scary situations.” Now, there are plenty of things that a child could be scared of, and I do not believe that they are talking about seeing a spider or being worried about a monster in the closet. A “scary situation” could be any variety of things with limitless possibilities, and I think that this may have skewed the scores a little bit. The question should have been a little more specific when asking about their avoidant behavior, is all I am saying. I trust that the researchers did a fair job (at least) at providing “scary situations,” as they did not give us specific information as to what tactics they used in this particular article. Now, as I mentioned