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Thirty-three volunteer families of 6-12-year-old children with severe and highly disruptive nighttime fears of long duration were randomly assigned to experimental and waiting-list control groups. Families attended three training meetings. Children practiced and self-monitored nightly self-control exercises at home while parents supervised, monitored, and rewarded their efforts with praise and "bravery" tokens. Nightly exercises consisted of (a) muscle relaxation, (b) imagining a pleasant scene, and (c) reciting "brave" self-statements. After 3 weeks of training, the experimental group had significantly less nighttime fear than did the control group, as measured by parents' retrospective reports and their direct nightly observations of children's fear behavior. Two-, 6-, and 12-month follow-ups were conducted for all children after the completion of training. The follow-ups showed maintenance of and steady improvement in nighttime fearless behavior, with only one of the children exhibiting fear. No new problems occurred. The results support the use of direct instruction of parents and children to overcome severe nighttime fears of children.

Surveys of parents have revealed the common use of physical punishment in disciplining children. In this study, responses of young, unmarried adults about their own personal experiences in having been spanked were obtained from 679 college freshmen. These respondents indicated (a) that being physically punished was a common childhood experience, with 93.2% of the respondents having been spanked as children; (b) that these young adults are now very accepting of the use of spanking by parents and they fully intend to carry on the spanking tradition with their own (future) children; and (c) that those who were not spanked as children are now significantly less accepting of the practice than those who were spanked. Other findings, such as the ages at which spankings occurred, their severity, injuries, the involvement of anger of parents and resentment of children, and the importance of studying common or “subabusive” violence against children are discussed.

Behavioral literature on childhood fears, including conceptual models, normative research, and fear-reduction studies is reviewed. The main conclusions are as follows: (a) The information value of nearly 60 years of normative studies is meager, and their continuation is of doubtful value; (b) most research has been limited to laboratory studies of mildly to moderately fearful children, and few data exist on severe fears studied in the child's natural environment or on the clinical prevalence of fear; (c) cognitive and developmental factors have been largely ignored; (d) modeling is the most frequently used and reliably effective fear-reduction strategy; (e) a cognitive, verbal-mediation approach is promising, but is not yet sufficiently researched; (f) there is little evidence that systematic desensitization or contingency management strategies are effective. Implications for large-scale fear reduction and prevention are discussed. The need for research that recognizes the complex paradigms of children's fears is suggested.This article is a selective review of behavioral treatment of children's fears, an area relatively neglected by behavior therapists and researchers despite their considerable attention to adult fear reduction (Graziano, 1975). Adults seem to minimize the importance of children's fears, viewing them as common and transitory and thus not a particularly serious part of normal development. But children's fears may not always be transient, and some, such as specific animal phobias (Jersild, 1968; Jersild & Holmes, 1935a;Marks & Gelder, 1966) and fear of physical injury or psychic stress (L. C. Miller, Barrett, Hampe, & Noble, 1972b) may persist as adult problems. Children do experience fears, often intense and disturbing, and the psychological suffering of a fearful child, even if it remits in a few years, is at least as worthy of professional concern as is the suffering of adults. There seems good reason for urging more study of fear reduction in children.Because of this review's behavioral focus, the large psychoanalytic literature is not in-Requests for reprints should be sent to Anthony

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