For the first few years of life, children’s
thought processes resemble those of our primitive ancestors: Youngsters are
powerfully affected by invisible feelings and ephemeral images, but they cannot
understand where these sensations come from. With their limited knowledge,
young children find just about everything around them potentially scary. Until
their mental abilities have matured enough to distinguish the real from the
unreal, the external from the internal, youngsters are naturally susceptible to
some degree of confusion and distress.
A child’s imaginative life begins to
quicken around the time he turns two, a result of his newly acquired ability to
create independent ideas on his own. Suddenly the youngster is the possessor of
an entire kingdom of images that exist solely within hid mind: Side by side
with the external realities of feeding and dressing, of riding in the car and
playing with toys, the child now is contending daily with such illusory
complexities as bears under his bed, monsters that chase him in his sleep and
“friends” that are visible to him alone. At the same time, the child is
struggling to sort out an inner world of intense feelings. Strong impulses that
he will one day know by such names as jealousy and love and anger now strike him
only as powerful sensations over which he has no control. These and other
emotions, half-formed and only vaguely understood, blend with fantasy to create
a host of fears and anxieties.
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