Have you ever been in a situation where your child is scared or nervous about something and you want to encourage them to be brave and confident but aren’t sure what to say or what to do? An emerging line of research finds that a parent’s presence alone might be enough to change how your child responds when they are scared or nervous. A new study that was just published in the journal Developmental Science even suggests that a parent’s presence might impact how a child’s brain responds to fear.

Research consistently shows that children learn from their parents what is safe versus dangerous and when to be scared. Children learn fear from their parents by associating something neutral with a fear response. For example, children have no reason to be afraid of a hot stove but they learn from their parents to be afraid of it. The first time that they reach their hand toward a hot stove and their parent yells or grabs their hand, they learn to associate the neutral object (a stove) with fear. Researchers refer to this as “fear conditioning”. Children also learn that they are safe by paying attention to their parents. For example, they learn to associate an event that causes fear (such as a new person........

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