It would be nice if all monsters turned out as lovable as the ones in Maurice Sendak's book, “Where the Wild Things Are.” Reading children's books like Sendak's is a terrific tool for helping children overcome their irrational fear of what's under the bed. However, night terrors, nightmares and sleep anxiety are just some of the difficulties many children and their parents deal with that don't easily go away.

Anxiety doesn't always creep up like a zombie when the lights go out, either. Children may suffer from daytime anxieties about a great many issues such as leaving home to attend school each day, the thought of being accidentally left behind somewhere, stressful relations among family members (particularly parents), or irrational fear of strangers. These can trigger panic attacks with symptoms such as rapid and shallow breathing, increased heart rate, dilated pupils as well as excessive crying, soiling underwear, or assuming the fetal position.

If psychosomatic symptoms plague your child, seeing a pediatrician or a mental health professional might offer solutions to your specific issues.

However, if your child suffers from average childhood fears that generally do not interfere with her normal routine, the more you learn about how to deal with the problem to help your child master her fears will help her eventually grow out of them.

It's important to know that anxiety is not externally driven; rather, it is fed internally. Our thinking drives anxiety, although it is often triggered by events. Here is an example:

1. The child tells himself a story. He hears about a car accident victim and imagines a similar story in his own family.

2. The child creates an awful ending. He sees his father getting into a car, which triggers his belief in a worst-case scenario. The child is convinced that a car accident is eminent and that his dad will probably die.

3. The child has a panic attack. He succumbs to psychosomatic anxiety symptoms because he believes he is unable to cope with this traumatic future event.

Telling your child the statistical probability of his father dying in a car accident is generally not reassuring. Likewise, I doubt it helps you or me while flying to know how much safer airplanes are than cars when we feel our fears rising upon takeoff. At this point, the irrational fear has overtaken logic and reasoning. Even if dad comes home safety and you say, “See now, nothing happened,” an anxious child will probably entertain the same doomsday scenario the next day.

Instead, empower your child to rewrite her story's ending. Here are some exercises to reduce or reverse anxiety:

1. Turn the light on the “monster.” If a child is afraid of zombies or strangers, have her draw a picture of her fear and then add some funny embellishments to deface it. Your child has an overly active imagination, right? Have him use it to turn scary teenagers with nose piercings into cows on paper with nose rings. He can also write a humorous story at the bottom and give the teens a silly name (i.e. “Cowpokes”). The next time he see the “scary” people, he can conjure up the funny image instead, think of the silly name and say, “Moo.”

2. Ask “what if” questions. If a child is frequently afraid of robbers invading your home, reassure her that you will do everything possible to keep your home safe. Show her how you take precautions. Nevertheless, let her know that if something were to happen, she can deal with it. Help your child master her fears by not dismissing them, but addressing them. What would she do if a robber broke into your home at night? Walk her through a different ending to her story, one that shows how resilient and strong she is. This exercise helps with many fears such as separation anxiety at school, a baby sitter, or the fear of being lost.

3. Fight fire with fire. Some therapists literally do this. They have the child write down her fear or draw a picture of it and throw the paper into the fire. But I used this tool in another way. One of my sons had nighttime fears for many years. He also loved watching episodes of “The Three Stooges.” Neither his “monsters” nor the Stooges were real, but we made one more powerful than the other in his mind.

First, we talked about what was his actual fear. It was very hard for him to articulate, but describing the Thing helped bring it out of the closet and into the light. Once he was able to talk about it, we found another fictional Thing that could come to his rescue. It could have been Superman or Captain America, but he chose the Three Stooges because they were so funny and created all sorts of mishaps.

There's nothing more powerful than laughing at your fears. Finally, we discussed what would happen when the monster entered his mind. He created a new ending to his story where the Three Stooges would inadvertently pummel the poor monster to death, just like they did to the villains in the television series.

All three of these tools, or exercises, allow your child to tell herself a new narrative, write a new ending and face her fears. When her fictional monsters roar their terrible roars, she will be able to tame them by saying, “Be still!” and staring into their yellow eyes without blinking. In other words, your child will be master of where her Wild Things are.

Julie K. Nelson is the author of “Parenting With Spiritual Power,” a speaker and professor at Utah Valley University. Her website is nelsonjuliek.com, where she writes articles on the joys, challenges and power of parenting.