When I Was a Child: I Was Always Afraid by Michael Cascio

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Fear is a much needed, deep-seated primary human emotion without which we wouldn’t survive. But fear can become intolerable and take over lives: we become afraid of our own shadow. Fear gains its strength from a lack of knowledge. That is, things we don’t know about or understand make us fearful. As we grow attaining increased knowledge and experience, our fears should become dissipated.

Young children are especially ‘vulnerable’ to fear. The survival instinct that they are born with is founded on fear. As a child develops, they have many different worries and anxieties ranging from fear of the dark, fear of small spaces, fear of sleeping alone, fear of thunder, fear of shadows, fear of spiders, and the fear of loud noises to name but a few. Left unaddressed or just dismissed by adults as irrational worries, these fears can take hold and grow into real anxieties and phobias. Successful parenting is about calming these fears.

Cascio’s book- When I Was a Child, I Was Always Afraid- addresses many everyday fears children face, and provides a useful additional armament for parents in their task to placate fears in youngsters. A combination of beautiful illustrations and words with the metrical structure of verse makes this an ideal read to educate a child and lessen the impact of the potentially fearful world in which they are growing up in. I’m getting a copy for our grandchild.

A copy of this book was provided by the author for review purposes.




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