Arachnophobia

I am not scared of spiders.

I don't particularly like big nasty looking spiders inside since I have had children. The first time I remember actually bothering to remove a spider was a couple of weeks after my first baby was born, and I found a whitetail in the kitchen of our studio apartment. Up until that point, I would have actually happily co-existed with the spider, but I felt a little protective of my baby, and decided it would be better for the white tail spider to live outside. After child birth, I also drew the line at huntsmen if they decided to live on the ceiling or wall above my children's beds.

Oh, and the time my hand discovered one under the car door handle, I squealed like a girl. Apart from that, I am pretty cool about spiders.

My husband grew up on farms, he couldn't care less about spiders.

This attitude has been passed down to our two boys. Our eldest has never shown to have any issues with spiders (or any creepy crawlies of any type in fact, often collecting them and letting them live in his bedroom). Our second boy went through a stage of really not liking spider webs. He would visit his grandmother and happily point out all the spider webs she had missed in her dusting. It is quite amazing how different the view of furniture is for a 3 year old!

However, my little girl, is quite a different story. She is two and a half, and at the beginning of the year
she started saying 'spider! scary!'. She would have trouble getting to sleep, because she was sure that there were spiders crawling up the wall next to here bed. There were none that we could see.

I bought a 'lift the flap' type book, that happened to have a picture of a spider that you could lift the flap of. She had very happily lifted the flap of several pages, but baulked when she got to the spider, and flat out refused to touch it.  Even though it was just a picture.

Today we went to the Melbourne Museum to their Bugs Alive exhibition. She found it all pretty interesting, but when I lifted her up to get closer to the window of the tarantula display, she arched her back and pushed away with her feet. Their was no way she was going to touch that window. She then said that they would crawl all over her. Later I asked her about it, she said she didn't like seeing the spiders, but it was okay because they were in their 'homes'.

I find it pretty fascinating, because I don't think she has been exposed to people who outwardly talk of being scared of spiders. Could her fear be innate? The psychologist in me finds the nature/nurture debate fascinating, and since becoming a parent, my viewpoint of much of it has definitely changed.

Do your children have phobias? Are they things you expected?

Are you scared of Spiders?

What is your opinion on the nature/nurture debate? Has becoming a parent changed your feelings on it? I'd love to hear your thoughts!