Re: update to my dentist question

"bizby40" <bizby40@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


"Rosalie B." <gmbeasley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"bizby40" <bizby40@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Rosalie B." <gmbeasley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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I think both of them were unusually clear sighted about this - I
think the majority of parents assume that their children will feel the
same as they do about things.

I don't agree. I think the majority of parents try
not to let their kids inherit their fears. My own

Many people don't like snakes, but not many people worry about
passing this fear along to their children. I was taking a video tape
of a snake that was in a tree by my driveway and the boy next door
came over to see ds, and said "Oh, a snake - let's kill it" (or
something of that sort). And you can hear me on the tape saying,
"It's a beautiful snake .." and going on to say how lucky we were to
see it. And the boy pauses and then echoes what I'm saying (although
a little bit tentatively). He was saying what he expected me to
approve of and obviously he got that from home.

But really I think the problem is more with things that are not as
extreme as a phobia, because the people with a phobia know how hard it
is to live with. It's the less obvious fears and dislikes that are
the problem - things that we don't even think about as a prejudice.

Well, sure, but this isn't what we were talking about.
Surely no one *wants* their kids to be afraid of dentists,
nor to be afraid of heights. That's not really the same
thing as passing along your dislikes.

It isn't that they WANT the child to be afraid of dentists. It is
that they ASSUME that everyone will naturally be afraid of dentists so
they take extraordinary steps to try to prevent this (like insisting
on being with the child even when the child doesn't really need them
or NOT being with the child - saying that they can't stand to be in
the dentist office themselves,- this is predicated on the idea that
everyone is afraid of the dentist so fear of the dentist is
inevitable). The child will figure out that there is something to be
scared of.

Or else they assume that the child will NOT be afraid of the dentist
when the child IS. I'm not exactly sure why, but one of my children
IS afraid of the dentist. I never went into the examining room with
any of them, nor did my parents go in with me. So I assumed that my
children would not have a fear of the dentist.

And even though when I was a child, our dentist did not believe in
anesthesia when putting in fillings (of which I had a lot), I'm not
afraid of the dentist. One of my children had several baby teeth
extracted without much anesthesia, AFAIK she is not afraid of the
dentist.

For the one that is afraid, I THINK that the fear came about when she
was almost 18 and she had to have a whole head scan and they left her
in the dentist chair restrained for an hour or more (I wasn't there at
the time). She was very upset about this, but it wouldn't have
occurred to me that she'd need an advocate at that age.



..
grandma Rosalie
.

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