The flights are booked. Bali, or the Gold Coast, or the grandparents in Perth. You’ve paid, you’ve told the kids, and one of them has gone quiet. A week later the bedtime questions start. What if the plane crashes. What if I’m sick on the plane. What if something happens to the house while we’re away.
Parents call me in November and say ‘my child is scared of flying’. When I sit down with the child, it’s almost never one thing. It’s one of three quite different fears wearing the same costume, and the reason the reassurance you’ve been giving hasn’t worked is that you may have been reassuring the wrong fear.
This post isn’t about how safe flying is. Your child has heard that speech and it didn’t help, because the fear isn’t living in the part of the brain that listens to statistics. It’s about working out which fear you’ve actually got, and what helps with each one.
First, find out which fear it is
At a calm moment, not at bedtime and not in the car, ask one question: ‘When you think about the trip, what’s the bit you think about most?’ Then don’t argue with the answer. Don’t explain, don’t reassure, just listen. The answer will land in one of three places.
Fear one: the plane itself
The noise at take-off. The lurch. The idea of being thirty thousand feet up with no way out. The drop when the seatbelt sign comes on. This is the classic phobia, and oddly it’s often the easiest of the three to work with, because it’s specific. The brain is afraid of a particular set of sensations it has never felt, or felt once and filed as dangerous.
What helps
Familiarity. An anxious brain is afraid of the unknown, so make as much of the flight known as you can before you go. Watch take-off and landing videos filmed from a passenger seat, sound on, at a volume your child controls, as many times as they like. Let them get bored by it. Boredom is the opposite of fear.
Better still, go to the airport without flying. Drive to Tullamarine on a Sunday, park for an hour, walk through the terminal, watch the planes from the viewing area, buy a juice near the gates, go home. For a child who has never done it, that one outing can take the fear down more than a month of talking. Melbourne Airport also publishes a sensory guide for families that’s worth a look.
On the day: a window seat, so they can see the thing they’re afraid of instead of imagining it, and a job at the airport, like holding the boarding passes, because a child with a task is a child whose brain is busy.
Fear two: being sick
Some children don’t care about the plane at all. What they dread is a sealed room full of strangers and sick bags, with no way to leave if they, or the person next to them, vomit. If your child also avoids certain foods, panics when a sibling has a tummy bug, or asks ‘am I going to be sick?’ before long car trips, you’re probably looking at emetophobia, the fear of vomiting. It’s one of the most under-recognised anxieties in children, and the plane is just the stage it plays out on.
What helps
Don’t promise it won’t happen. A child who’s been told ‘you won’t be sick’ has nothing to hold on to if they start to feel queasy. A child who knows there’s a plan is a different child. So make the plan, calmly and in advance: where the bag is, that you’ll be right there, what you’ll do, and that it would be fine. Then practise feeling a bit queasy on purpose, gently, by spinning on the spot or reading in the car, and getting through it. The goal isn’t to avoid the feeling. It’s to prove to the body that the feeling is survivable.
An aisle seat, not a window. Light food beforehand. And a sea band or a travel sickness tablet if your GP is happy with it, not because they’ll necessarily work, but because having something to do lowers the alarm.
If this is your child, I’d read the separate guide I’ve written on emetophobia in children before you do anything else, because the plane fear will keep coming back in other forms until the underlying fear is dealt with.
Fear three: being far from home
What if the house burns down. What if the dog dies. What if Mum gets sick in a country where I don’t know the hospital. What if we can’t get back. These children aren’t afraid of the plane. They’re afraid of being far from everything that keeps the world predictable, and the plane is simply the thing that takes them there. It’s separation anxiety with a boarding pass, and it’s the one parents most often mistake for a flying phobia.
What helps
Reassurance about the plane is useless here, because the plane was never the problem. What helps is making the destination known and the safety structures visible. Show them where you’ll stay, on the map and in photos. Find the nearest hospital and show them that too, matter-of-factly; a child who asks about hospitals wants the information, not to be told not to worry. Arrange for the house and the dog in front of them, so they see it handled. Let them pack one thing that is unambiguously home.
And name the real fear out loud, once: ‘I think the bit that worries you is being a long way from home. That’s a normal thing to feel.’ Naming it takes some of the charge out. Arguing with it adds charge.
What all three have in common
Whatever the fear, the body is doing the same thing: running an alarm about something it hasn’t experienced yet. So the two things that help every child are sleep and practice. Earlier nights and a phone-free hour before bed in the fortnight before you go, because a tired, over-stimulated child has no reserves. And a two-minute breathing habit, twice a day: feet flat, hand on tummy, breathe out for longer than you breathe in, while picturing the bit of the trip they fear most and staying slow and loose. By the time you’re at the gate they’ve done it thirty times, and the body knows it.
Where hypnotherapy fits
Most children with mild travel nerves don’t need me. What’s above is enough. The children I see are the ones where the fear has escalated over previous trips, where a holiday has already been cancelled or ruined, where the questions have become constant, or where the fear has spread into other parts of life. For those children, a small number of sessions before the trip can change it.
The work with children is gentle and, from their side, mostly fun. We talk first, I find out in their own words which of the three fears it is and what the worst bit looks like, and then I guide them into a relaxed, imaginative state that children slip into far more easily than adults do. In that state we walk through the flight, or the plane, or being away, while their body stays calm, and we build an anchor they can use in the seat. For emetophobia we also work on the fear underneath the plane. For separation fears we work on carrying the sense of safety with them rather than leaving it at home.
I’ve spent twenty-five years working with anxious children, including years as a behaviour therapist for children with autism, and I’ve watched a lot of travel fears come right down. I don’t promise anyone’s child a perfect flight. I can promise to tell you honestly in the first conversation whether this is something I can help with, and how many sessions I’d suggest.
For families outside Melbourne, or in the scramble before a trip, sessions are available online by video and work well with children from about seven upwards.
Frequently asked questions
How do I know which of the three fears my child has?
Ask, at a calm time, what part of the trip they think about most, and listen without correcting. Plane sensations point to a flying phobia. Sick bags, nausea or other people vomiting point to emetophobia. The house, the dog, hospitals or ‘getting back’ point to separation anxiety.
How many hypnotherapy sessions before a flight?
It depends on the child and the fear, and I’ll tell you in the free chat. Often it’s a small number spaced a week apart, finishing a few days before travel. If the flight is close, call anyway.
How old does my child need to be?
From about six or seven for sessions with me. For younger children the Goulding SleepTalk® process, which parents deliver at home, is often the better fit, and I can talk you through it.
Can we do sessions online if we live interstate?
Yes. Online sessions via video work well with children from about seven, and I see families from across Australia this way, particularly before holidays.
What does it cost?
I go through fees in the free 15-minute chat, along with what a realistic plan looks like for your child. Many health funds offer a rebate under extras cover.
Find the fear, then fix that one
You don’t need to cancel the trip and you don’t need to white-knuckle it. Ask the one question, work out which of the three you’re dealing with, and do the things that help that fear rather than the one you assumed. And if it’s already ruined a holiday, or the questions won’t stop, that’s the point to get in touch, and November is a better month to do it than December.
Request a free 15-minute chat — fill in the contact form, tell me which of the three fears you’re seeing and when you fly, and I’ll call you back. Beaumaris clinic and online. 0425 726 732.