I've got one kid who's scared of just about everything and one who's scared of just about nothing. Same house, same parents, same bedtime — two completely different kids. So I gave up a long time ago looking for the one trick that turns a scared kid brave.
What I do instead is teach them Daniel. It's one of my favorite Bible stories for a scared kid, because Daniel never pretends the scary thing isn't scary. There are real lions in it. And God is right there in the middle of them.
Here's how I tell it.
The story of Daniel and the lions' den, plain and simple
Daniel loved God, and he prayed to Him three times a day, every day, down on his knees by his open window where anyone walking by could see. Some men at the palace didn't like Daniel, so they talked the king into a new rule: for thirty days, nobody was allowed to pray to anyone but the king. Break the rule, and you'd be thrown in with the lions.
Daniel heard about the rule. Then he went home, opened that same window, got down on his knees, and prayed to God just like he always did. He didn't make a show of it. He didn't hide, either. He kept doing what he'd always done, and he knew exactly what it might cost him.
They caught him, of course. The king actually liked Daniel and felt sick about the whole thing, but a rule was a rule, so down Daniel went into a pit full of lions, and they rolled a big stone over the top. The Bible says the king was so worried he couldn't eat or sleep the whole night.
First thing in the morning the king ran to the pit and called down, half afraid of what he'd hear. And Daniel called right back up, not a scratch on him: "My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt me" (Daniel 6:22). The same God Daniel prayed to at his window in the daylight had been down in that dark pit with him all night long.
What I want my kids to get from it
Here's the part I point out every single time: the Bible never says Daniel wasn't scared. Of course he was scared. They were lions. What it says is that he trusted God more than he was scared of the pit.
That's the thing I actually want for my kids. Not kids who never feel afraid — I've got daily proof that ship has sailed — but kids who know they're not alone when they are. Because their lions aren't really lions. It's the swim lesson. The dark hallway. Telling me the truth about the broken lamp instead of blaming the dog. Walking into a room full of kids they don't know. Same scared feeling, smaller pit. And the same God down in it with them.
How we act it out (the part they beg to do twice)
My kids hold onto a story way better when they get to be in it. This takes about two minutes.
Build a pit — a blanket thrown over two kitchen chairs works, or just crawl under the table. One kid is Daniel and climbs inside. You're the lion (grab a sibling or a couple of stuffed animals if you want a whole pride), and you prowl around the outside growling. Put a couch cushion over the opening; that's the big stone. Turn the lamp down low for a few seconds — that's the long scary night — and let Daniel pray in there like the real Daniel did while the lion paces around but its mouth is stuck shut and it cannot bite. Then flip the lamp back on: morning's here. Pull the cushion away, and Daniel crawls out safe.
That's the whole thing. One round. Lamp down, lamp up, out you come. Somewhere in the middle the lion always catches the giggles and forgets to be scary, and that's kind of the point. A thing you laughed about together on the living room floor is a whole lot smaller at 2am in a dark bedroom.
The words we say when they're scared
We never sat down and picked a "family verse." It just sort of happened. One line kept coming out of my mouth — in the car before the dentist, standing outside a new Sunday school class, under the covers after the light's off. Five words from the Psalms: "When I am afraid, I put my trust in you" (Psalm 56:3).
My scared one had it memorized before I even realized I was teaching it. And I like it a lot better than "there's nothing to be scared of," which we all know is a lie half the time. This one doesn't pretend the fear away. It just tells you what to do with it — hand it to God.
If you want it up where they can see it and not only hear it, I keep the "Bold and Brave" Isaiah 41:10 print hanging down low on the wall in the room where the scared feelings show up: "Do not fear, for I am with you… I will strengthen you and help you." That way the truest thing I can tell a frightened kid is already sitting there before I've even found the words.
When the lions come out at night
Bedtime is when the pit gets deep — the replay of the hard thing, the worry about tomorrow, the dark that feels a lot bigger than it did at lunch. Which makes it about the best time there is to do what Daniel did at his window. Don't wait for the scared feeling to pass first. Just pray, right in the thick of it.
If you want an easy place to start building that habit, and something you can actually put in their hands, our free Christian bedtime prayers for kids are five short prayers that rhyme — simple enough for your kid to say them right back to you before the light goes off, including one for the scared nights, so nobody's stuck down in the pit by themselves.
However your nights go — the brave ones and the ones that end in tears — here's what I pray over my house and yours: that our kids grow up knowing being brave was never about not being scared. It's about knowing Whose hand is holding theirs in the dark—keeping them safe through the long night, all the way to the morning light.
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