L.W.
I dealt with this very thing when my son was approximately 5 years old! He was terrified of insects, particularly crickets and misquitoes. My husband and I always reassured him and told him that the insects were afraid of him because he was so much bigger. We would sigh and say, "Poor misquito, he is so afraid of you. He is singing a good moring song to you just to say hi." We would shake our heads and walk away, not wanting to drive the point home too much. The point was to give him some cognitive techniques to manage his fears. We had to teach him to restructure his thoughts (fear) into something more palatable. In the same way, we referred to crickets as "Jimminy Cricket", a character he was familiar with and who was safe and cute. We would say, "Did Jimminy say hello this morning? What was he up to?" That way my son could think of it in a different and more safe way. My son continued to disdain insects (later it was spiders)and to this day does not like them. He did however find a way to deal with his fears so that they didn't control him. He is now almost 20 and he (and we) laugh at those memories.
L.
