4 year old fear of spiders

bovril

My 4 year old daughter has a terrible fear of spiders. Even tiny ones you can barely see make her go hysterical. She is literally shaking with fear and can't be in the room she has seen one in until it's gone. She is now refusing to use the downstairs loo as she's seen them too often in there. Myself and her dad have tried talking to her. We remove the spiders and put them outside so they can play with their friends. We have a story book with a friendly spider which we read but nothing works and it's getting worse.

Has anyone any advice or things we can try that we haven't already?

Bunnyslippers

My sister was like this, I remember my mother buying a lot of toy spiders so she got so used to seeing them around the house she grew out of it, for a bit anyway, she’s 35 now and is still scared of the big ones!!��. We had an incy wincy spider board game with small plastic spiders, she had a very cute stuffed toy spider - I’m sure if you can look online for one there are probably loads of cute ones.

I think it’s trying to make as little of a deal as possible of the behaviour and trying to make spiders look cute and cool. Maybe try doing some bug collecting with friends in the garden, kids learn by example so if she sees her little friends acting as if spiders are just another bug then she might learn to realise they’re no big deal! Try getting her to make bug house in the garden and drop in they’re for the spiders too, show her the different types, some are actually quite pretty and very small so maybe start off with those and show no fear yourselves so she starts to tone down the screaming!��

skallywag

Not sure what to advise you here really, I live with someone who is now in their 40's and still behaves in pretty much the same manner. Some people are just genuinely terrified of them, and I am not sure if there is any real way to get over it. It seems to be preprogrammed in some people without any logic or rationale behind it.

2Mad2BeMad

I'm 25 op and I'm afraid if spiders.
Although I don't get hysteric over them. I can't sleep in a room if I seen one I have to kill it and remove it by flushing it down the toilet haha
It's the only insect I'm afraid of and I don't know why I still am I know they can't harm me but they just freak me out.

When I was 4 I lived in an old house with my parents and there was a vent in my bedroom it was rusted and was in reach I remember opening it and a **** load of spiders came out of it crawling every where over the wall must of been over 100 of them.
Think it traumatized me for life.

branie2

It's very common