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The article is devoted to the study of modern six-year-old children and their parents’ fears. Despite numerous studies of childhood fears around the world, the question – while important – of the typical fears of today’s preschoolers, as well as the link between these fears and those of parents in their childhood and those of today, remains poorly investigated. Clarification of this issue was the purpose of the study. To identify children’s fears and own fears of parents, a specially designed questionnaire was used. The questions were answered by fathers and mothers of older preschoolers. The types of childhood fears mentioned in the questionnaire were selected based on the results of existing studies and on a trial experiment. The revealed fears were grouped by subject and orientation. The most common fear of modern preschoolers was fear of separation from parents, which is part of the group of relational. Significant differences between boys and girls were found only in the frequency of occurrence of individual fears: fear of strangers (more often among girls), fear of bad dreams and dentists (more often among boys). The coincidence of some fears of children and their mothers allows us to suggest the transferring of fears from the first to the second, which is confirmed by the results of a survey among mothers during psychological consultations. Between the fears of children and their fathers no matches were found. Opposite trends with age fears among mothers and fathers were detected: mothers’ number of fears increases compared to childhood, fathers decreases. At the same time, there are similar fears of preschoolers’ mothers and fathers, such as fears of heights, loss of relatives, death, snakes, and dogs.

This paper presents the findings of a ten-years longitudinal study on how PTSD impacted on the emotional development of child junior and adolescent survivors of in a terrorist attack on a school №1 in Beslan in 2004, who were undergoing in one degree or another course of psychological rehabilitation. Among the participants in of the research were are also included children of preschool age who survived the terrorist act in the preschool age in 2004, and in 2005 made up a group of first-graders, who, like the older children, had all the symptoms of PTSD. The article analyzes the differences between the emotional spheres of the children, in particular the “fears” of children who were inside the school during the attack, and children indirectly involved in a traumatic event. The study consisted of an annual testing using of a series of projective techniques batteries, as well as the personal observations of the development of children with PTSD during psycho-correctional work, extending over the entire longitudinal period (2005-2015). The result was a new approach to understanding the nature of child PTSD’s impact on a child and his socio-cultural characteristics and degree of involvement in a traumatic event. The data obtained in this study can be used for the organization of rehabilitation work with primary school aged children and adolescents with PTSD.

The presence of fears in preschoolers is a common problem any practicing psychologist faces in his or her work. In the present study we sought to determine whether a preschooler’s emotional ill-being reflects on the level of cognitive activities and the development of his social competence. The study involved 81 older age preschoolers from Moscow kindergartens. The average age of the girls is 69.2 months; the average age of the boys is 70.7 months. The analysis of the data obtained found no correlations between the amount of fears and the level of cognitive and social development. The data obtained suggests that the amount of fears as such do not affect the level of cognitive and social development, while increased levels of anxiety interfere with the successful cognitive activity of a child.