Children's fears come and go, but most children experience similar types of fears at approximately the same age. For toddlers, the worst fears are often associated with separation and change. Toddlers want their own mommy, daddy, .spoon, chair, and bed. They are profoundly conservative little people. The most daring toddlers feel content if they can hold onto what they already know. Yet, children's fears are a useful index of their development. Fear of strangers appears to be a consequence of their first specific attachment, and its ending is a sign that they have acquired a more inclusive schema of faces and people in general. A child who is afraid of cats but not of rabbits evidently can differentiate one small animal from another. Fear of a particular person implies recognition of that person. Parents can be of assistance, both in overcoming fears and in preventing their development. They can prepare a child through play, stories, and happy prognostications for dealing with new situations that might be overwhelming give prompt and unstinted comfort after a frightening experience and devise ways in which a child can be gently and gradually—not abruptly— encouraged to take another look at feared objects and situations. Avoidance of the feared object reinforces the fear, and the fear becomes increasingly intense. Children's fears should be taken seriously, never ridiculed or dismissed as silly or babyish. Often, if the caregiver can get the child to explain exactly what it is that is so frightening, the bald can be reassured. The one thing not to do is to force children into confronting a feared situation before they are ready to do so. Almost all children are afraid of something and, as with adults, these fears are often well- grounded. If we are in an open field during a thunderstorm, we probably have good reason to be afraid of lightning. But occasionally fear of something gets out of control and becomes a phobia. A phobia is an irrational fear of something. A child may be afraid of the dark and hesitate to go up the stairs alone at night. But when the child refuses to remain in a place where there is no light, such as the movies or bus or her bedroom, the fear is taking too great a toll on the child's development. There are many different ways that phobias are treated in children. One of these techniques, commonly referred to as contact desensitization, is a behavioral technique designed to' eliminate unnatural fears. This exact technique was used in one study with fifty snake-avoidant children ranging in age from three to nine years. To see which technique was most effective, the fifty children were divided into five groups: