For many children, loud noises are a real problem - sirens, fireworks, hand driers, vacuum cleaners, train engines make them cry or they say it hurts their ears. But, a fear of loud noises is perfectly normal in little children and even if it seems unreasonable to be scared of something we know is harmless, we need to deal with any fears as gently as possible so so not to make it worse.

New born babies show a reflex to a sudden noise, so fear of noise is an innate characteristic.  As humans, we are "programmed" to be wary of anything loud and threatening so it is normal to have a fear.

Part of the reason children fear loud noise is that is that they simply don't understand what the noise is and they feel scared of that unknown.  It also shocks them if it comes out of the blue so that startles them too.

Tips:

• Try not to expose children to unnecessary noise.
• Be calm when they get anxious and show them that everything is okay.
• Don't try to make them "face" their fear by exposing them to noise.  This will not help and will actually aggravate the problem.
• Talk about the noises and why they happen.
• Don't laugh so mock their fears.
• Let them touch the vacuum cleaner before you turn it on it might help.
• Discuss how you might cope with the noise together.

Make it into a game:

• Each time you hear a firework, shout whoosh bang! back at the firework.
• Each time you hear a siren chat about what it could be.  Use characters and ideas you child will appreciate.  Is it a fire engine saving a family of mice in a tree?; an ambulance rescuing a princess who has fallen down a hill or a police car catching baddies?
• When you hear the noise, you have to clap or say hooray!  The first person each time, wins a prize!

It's very easy as parents and carers to pass on, without being really aware of it, some of our fears or phobias; a fear of spiders might be one of the most obvious ones!  However, in an attempt to counter this, and as a fun way to introduce children to one of the most common and varied insect in our gardens (and houses!), here are some fun activities to do with children, all about spiders!  Don't be alarmed if you are nervous of spiders, they're made of chocolate, cardboard and lots of coloured paint!

Tasty Spider - take a chocolate cup cake or chocolate covered round biscuit and pop on 2 cheerios as eyes.  Take  4 chocolate fingers and break them in half and stick them in the side to make a spider!  Perhaps share between two children to eat or you may have a sugar rush situation! Yum!

Rainbow spider - draw a round body shape and 8 chubby legs to make a spider picture to decorate.  Cover it with glue and stick on lots of coloured tissue paper in the colours of the rainbow.  Stick on some eyes and a happy smile and stick on a window so the light shows up all the lovely colours.

Egg box spiders - cut out the mounds from egg boxes and paint some bright, spidery colours.  Poke in 8 short lengths of pipe cleaners and bend half way down each to look like spider legs.  Draw on some eyes and thread some wool through the top so you have a spider hanging from a web.  Spooky!

Spider's Web - with a tube of glue draw a web shape on a piece of black paper.  Sprinkle silver glitter or sand all over the page.  Shake off any excess and you have a sparkly web covered in dew.  Draw a little spider on black paper and stick this on ready for action.

Number Spider -Draw a big spider body and eight wide legs on the back of a cereal packet and paint it lovely sunny colours. Cut out 8 small circles or use stickers and number each leg.  Practice counting 1 to 8 as you count the legs together.  Try taking the stickers off and encouraging your little one to recognise each number and stick it on in order.

Happy plate spider - take a paper plate and cover with paint.  Stick on some long thins strips of card as legs and paint these too.  Add some googly eyes and a big smiley face!

Who's scared of the spider!  Not Us!