What Happens When I'm Scared? (How to Understand and Talk About Fear and Anxiety)

The perfect tool to teach children how to handle emotions such as feeling scared, anxious, or worried. What Happens When I'm Scared? provides parents, grandparents, teachers, and caregivers the opportunity to speak with children about this important topic.

What is fear?

What does it feel like?

Can feelings of fear be passed on to others?

And can they return?

In What Happens When I’m Scared?, children take turns listing what scares them. They express their concern over the dark, big dogs, heights, spiders, monsters under the bed, bullies, extreme weather, and speaking in front of others.

Through discussing what they fear, they begin to understand why certain places, people, or circumstances make them feel nervous, worried, anxious, scared, or even nauseous. They learn about their body’s biological reactions, both physical and mental. And they determine that it’s absolutely okay to be afraid and that everyone, from babies to grandparents, is scared sometimes.

In What Happens When I'm Scared, award-winning author and illustrator Dagmar Geisler draws attention to what could be a sensitive subject to some and provides advice for overcoming fear that will be helpful to young readers as well as those who live and work with them daily, like parents, grandparents, teachers, siblings, and caregivers.