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My 4 year old son has developed a fear of foxes. No idea why. It might be Mr Todd from Peter Rabbit, but he watches that quite happily, so I'm not sure. I've explained that foxes are scared of humans, smaller than him, can't open doors/windows, don't have a set of our keys etc, but he's not convinced. So every night, he's now hiding under his duvet. Being a clever t wat, I went on YouTube and showed him a video of some bloke who's tamed a number of foxes, he was rolling round with them, stroking them etc; see, they're not scary. I thought this would do the job, but my son perceptively pointed out that the foxes in the video didn't look very scared of humans, so they may well sneak into his bedroom after all. Balls.
I'm not sure how to crack this one, and I don't want him to be anxious/scared. Until the fox thing, we'd be doing fine. As a kid, I was scared of dinosaurs because I wasn't entirely convinced they were extinct and when I asked my Mum, she just said there may well be dinosaurs out there somewhere, but we'd probably hear them in time to run away. Cheers.
I was then completely paranoid about nuclear war from about six to eleven, and used to get seriously stressed out about being away from my family when the four minute warning was sounded. And I wasn't convinced we even had a siren round our way, which didn't help either. My best case scenario, was us having just got home from the Chippy, sat round the table with my Nan and Grandad, most of the way through my scampi and chips and the bomb being dropped. And I'm an optimist by nature. This stressed me out because we only had fish and chips on a Friday, so I was relying on the Soviets bombing us on a Friday at about 5pm. Getting during school swimming or something would have been rubbish.
Running alongside my constant fear of nuclear holocaust for a couple of years was a fear of werewolves, which lasted until I was about ten, having seen the 'Thriller' video and watched bits of 'An American werewolf in London' from behind a cushion round my mate's house. I used to check the lunar cycle in my Mum's diary to make sure I was at home on Full moons, and for a short time, because I shared a room with my brother, I would try and stay awake as long as possible to make sure he wasn't a werewolf. Which thankfully, he wasn't. I was even scared of 'Manimal' FFS!
Was I just a massive bed wetter as a kid, or did everyone else worry about nuclear war, dinosaurs and sharing bunks with a werewolf? I was also scared of the Muppets, Dr Who and Star Trek. I'm hoping my son has a less anxious time, but he'll probably inherit his Mum's fear of balloons, dogs and fireworks. What were you scared of as a kid?
Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 21:04 - Dec 5 with 2186 views
Cybermen and Daleks were both scary but the Dr Who monster that really terrified me were Yetis because I was tiny (black and white TV was scarier) and apparently they infested the tube - I was terrified when a couple of weeks later we were on the Bakerloo Line and went underground.
I was another scared of a nuclear war but for us Cold War kids that wasn't phobia it was a rational response. All sorts of NATO installations were within a fireball's range. For some reason the thing that scared me was that if the 4 minute warning went in the middle of the night we might not hear it, so whenever I went to sleep there was no guarantee I'd wake up.
My wife drummed into the kids how to get out of the house if there was ever a fire with the result that the poor sods had nightmares about it for years.
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 21:12 - Dec 5 with 2182 views
I was convinced that I was going to be bitten and get rabies.... worse still I was even more convinced that I would have to have the injection in my belly to counter it..... I stayed well clear of everyone else's dogs as a result. Our dog Butch was beyond reproach.
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 21:22 - Dec 5 with 2165 views
What were you scared of as a kid? on 21:04 - Dec 5 by CiderwithRsie
Cybermen and Daleks were both scary but the Dr Who monster that really terrified me were Yetis because I was tiny (black and white TV was scarier) and apparently they infested the tube - I was terrified when a couple of weeks later we were on the Bakerloo Line and went underground.
I was another scared of a nuclear war but for us Cold War kids that wasn't phobia it was a rational response. All sorts of NATO installations were within a fireball's range. For some reason the thing that scared me was that if the 4 minute warning went in the middle of the night we might not hear it, so whenever I went to sleep there was no guarantee I'd wake up.
My wife drummed into the kids how to get out of the house if there was ever a fire with the result that the poor sods had nightmares about it for years.
The episodes with the yetis scarred me as a kid. To this day I hate tube tunnels.
Another phobia is rodents, in particular rats/mice.
Which doesn't help when I have worked for London Underground for 29 years.
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 21:44 - Dec 5 with 2140 views
I was absolutely terrified of Tim Curry's Pennywise in the (early 90s?) It miniseries. Christ alive, I didn't sleep for months after watching that, turns out I have a phobia of clowns, possibly stemming from when my mum took to the circus as a two year old and one of the maniacs came up to me in the audience.
Incidentally I thought the recent feature film was good fun but Pennywise, predictably, was nothing like as terrifying.
Also, AIDS and needles, I think because of the TV campaigns in the 80s warning about sharing needles. I was convinced someone was going to run up to me and inject me with AIDS.
[Post edited 5 Dec 2018 21:49]
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 21:53 - Dec 5 with 2127 views
Fungus. We were told they were deadly poisonous. My next door neighbours had an old unloved cooking apple tree at the bottom their garden. This thing had a enourmous fungus growing out of the trunk, one of those odd bright orange speckled growths that if you threw something at it to try and make the bastard thing angry, and hit it, chunks of white felsh would eminate from its grotesque round shaped body. It would grow bigger by the week. If my brother and I were playing football in our garden and the ball would go over the fence, deciding which one of us would clumb over to retrieve the ball and thus avoiding being poisoned by the deadly fungus was a right ordeal. You don't see those things growing too often anymore. Awful.
What were you scared of as a kid? on 18:07 - Dec 5 by LythamR
Cybermen
not the shiney modern variety
The grainy black and white ones William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton had to deal with, didnt like them at all and wasnt keen on Daleks either but it was the Cybermen who i thought we coming to get me
This, I thought they were terrifying.
Watering can, roll of bacofoil and two vacumn cleaner hoses
What were you scared of as a kid? on 22:22 - Dec 5 by Toast_R
Fungus. We were told they were deadly poisonous. My next door neighbours had an old unloved cooking apple tree at the bottom their garden. This thing had a enourmous fungus growing out of the trunk, one of those odd bright orange speckled growths that if you threw something at it to try and make the bastard thing angry, and hit it, chunks of white felsh would eminate from its grotesque round shaped body. It would grow bigger by the week. If my brother and I were playing football in our garden and the ball would go over the fence, deciding which one of us would clumb over to retrieve the ball and thus avoiding being poisoned by the deadly fungus was a right ordeal. You don't see those things growing too often anymore. Awful.
This! And toadstools. There were fly agarics where I grew up and someone must have told me they were poisonous, because I spent the next few hundred evenings convinced they'd come for me as soon as I fell asleep.
And snakes still scare the shit out of me, I'd avoid any continent with snakes on if I could.
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 22:45 - Dec 5 by hopphoops
This! And toadstools. There were fly agarics where I grew up and someone must have told me they were poisonous, because I spent the next few hundred evenings convinced they'd come for me as soon as I fell asleep.
And snakes still scare the shit out of me, I'd avoid any continent with snakes on if I could.
Dalekscouldn’t climb stairs ,
Used to hate the girl from the first ring film coming out of the tv Mum heard me swear for the first time at Ealing cinema while watching jaws , the moment the head floated out of the boat scared the living cr@p out of me and a youngish me uttered Fuking hell fairly loudly
What were you scared of as a kid? on 19:18 - Dec 5 by PunteR
There was a tv program which was in 2 parts i think, that came out in the very early 80s that freaked me out as a little kid. I dont remember the name of it but had shapeshifting aliens, jesus christ and 2 moons orbiting around the earth. It wasnt 'V' but something like that.
Pretty sure you were watching early episodes of Bullseye. Pre-Jim Bowen.
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 04:05 - Dec 6 with 1949 views
Apart from bugs, not really a massive fan of creepy crawlies. I respect them, nothing personal, it's just...spiders, those fcuking big house spiders we get in Britain, they scare the bejesus out of me truth be told. I wish i liked them, i love all animals. I'd certainly never purposely kill an insect unless it's a mosquito (because i've had Dengue Fever and if i get it again it might kill me so they reckon). Cockroaches are fcuking minging too.
Foxes are bloody lovely.
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 07:06 - Dec 6 with 1913 views
What were you scared of as a kid? on 16:34 - Dec 5 by simmo
I'm a bit of a scaredy cat, I don't remember specific phobias but didn't like the dark much and after my dad made me watch Childs Play to 'toughen me up', I can't watch ANYTHING spooky. The clip of the House on Haunting Hill or whatever that they showed through Gogglebox absolutely killed me the other week.
Also I love this - "I thought this would do the job, but my son perceptively pointed out that the foxes in the video didn't look very scared of humans, so they may well sneak into his bedroom after all. Balls." - kids are fckers for that, always seeing things in a way you don't expect.
Makaveli1882 - Fox and the Hound - good suggestion, that. I'll try and dig it out. Last night, I told him about foxes routinely sh itting on our wheelie bin lid when we lived in London and he thinks they might have been trying to climb on the bin to get in the window. I think I'm gonna let my wife take over from now on.
Simmo - I am still am absolute shi t merchant when it comes to horror or anything involving the occult/supernatural. You're not alone. I can't handle gore, but anything involving the supernatural freaks me out big time.
Just remembered that Triffids scared the fu ck out of me, and I used to have a deep fear of the countryside. We'd be sitting eating our sandwiches on a hillside in Wales or somewhere and my Dad would be talking about how nice the view was, and all I was thinking, sat there in my cagoule, was how exposed we'd be if some nutter crept up and started attacking us. Used to hate going to stay at my Auntie's bungalow in rural Berks because I was convinced we were all going to be butchered as soon as the Sun went down. Watching Deliverance didn't help much either. Still not 100% convinced by the countryside at night.
You wouldn't believe it, but I did actually have a really happy childhood!
Fulham FC: It's the taking part that counts
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 07:43 - Dec 6 with 1898 views
Probably had my biggest nightmares after watching Quatermass and the pit on b/w TV.
Otherwise as others have said, quicksand and giant clams had a particular horror for me although I think I've got over the latter as I have one in my garden.
[Post edited 6 Dec 2018 7:43]
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 08:11 - Dec 6 with 1877 views
I've always told me people that "horror films don't scare me, they just make me laugh cause they're so stupid". Bull$hit, they freak me out.
But it's always been rats, not helped by a chat with my Dad when he was putting me to bed. "Da, rats can't climb as high as a bed, can they? "Ha, twould be a strange rat that couldn't climb that far!"
Thanks, Da.
"The opposite of love, after all, is not hate, but indifference."
What were you scared of as a kid? on 07:06 - Dec 6 by Konk
Makaveli1882 - Fox and the Hound - good suggestion, that. I'll try and dig it out. Last night, I told him about foxes routinely sh itting on our wheelie bin lid when we lived in London and he thinks they might have been trying to climb on the bin to get in the window. I think I'm gonna let my wife take over from now on.
Simmo - I am still am absolute shi t merchant when it comes to horror or anything involving the occult/supernatural. You're not alone. I can't handle gore, but anything involving the supernatural freaks me out big time.
Just remembered that Triffids scared the fu ck out of me, and I used to have a deep fear of the countryside. We'd be sitting eating our sandwiches on a hillside in Wales or somewhere and my Dad would be talking about how nice the view was, and all I was thinking, sat there in my cagoule, was how exposed we'd be if some nutter crept up and started attacking us. Used to hate going to stay at my Auntie's bungalow in rural Berks because I was convinced we were all going to be butchered as soon as the Sun went down. Watching Deliverance didn't help much either. Still not 100% convinced by the countryside at night.
You wouldn't believe it, but I did actually have a really happy childhood!
Konky-baby - I've been thinking about this and decided to do a bit of research into your son's present predicament. I managed to dig this up - look on it as a modern day public information film, the sort we used to get in the 70's.
When i was about 7 getting into a car in a public car park, a downs syndrome child of similar age, maybe older, grabbed me and started shaking me (not aggressively i don't think). It freaked me so much that i made every excuse to not go out in a public place for fear of it happening again for several months. Feel quite ashamed to this day.
This was the number one thing that scared the life out of me. For some strange, coincidental reason, my mum and dad had an inpromptu party in our front garden one Saturday night, and left me and my brother watching this. I think I was about 8 at the time and after watching the film couldn't go to the toilet (no 1's, obviously) with my back to the door until I was about 12.
Still not too keen on Werewolves.
Did I ever mention that I was in Minder?
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What were you scared of as a kid? on 09:51 - Dec 6 with 1773 views
What were you scared of as a kid? on 09:31 - Dec 6 by BlackCrowe
When i was about 7 getting into a car in a public car park, a downs syndrome child of similar age, maybe older, grabbed me and started shaking me (not aggressively i don't think). It freaked me so much that i made every excuse to not go out in a public place for fear of it happening again for several months. Feel quite ashamed to this day.
You were only 7. Blameless in every way.
"The opposite of love, after all, is not hate, but indifference."
Oddly enough, I got a bit scared of being on boats as a kid. Not the little ones or canoes but really big ones like ferries and the like. I think it stemmed from watching old war movies where a battleship / carrier gets torpedoed and sinks: I always thought about what it might be like to be one of the poor sods at the bottom of the ship who couldn't get out.
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