"I'm scared"

My girls had no real idea of "being scared" until Halloween. With all of the masks and what not, they were afraid. Since then, they talk about being scared when they almost fall and I have no issue with that. But for the past 3 nights and for naps, K tells me that she is scared of her room because, "the bugs are going to get me". Now we have searched her room and do not find bugs! The weird thing is, she LOVES bugs! She always chases flies, love snails, and has never been stung by a bee or anything. Is there anything I can do to calm her nerves? It makes me feel terrible to leave her in her room if she is legitimately scared. She only cries for a couple of minutes and then goes to sleep, but I wish there was something I could do.

 

I have had friends find success with monster spray or in your case bug spray. Just a clear squirt bottle with water and you label it appropriately and then let her squirt it a few times at bed time. With my son, he went through a stage where he was scared of things at bed time. I told him his gray dino would protect him and to this day if he is scared (whether it be storms, a bad dream, etc) he cuddles up with gray dino and goes right back to sleep.

 

We have night lights in our rooms. We deal with "I'm scared" quite a bit with my daughter. I try to be patient and let her look around. SOmetimes it is a shadow from the nightlight and I just have to move what is making the shadow. Different things work with different kids. :hug: I have to say though that *that* is the worst feeling... trying to make the child feel safe when the 'monster' is fictious.

 

No advice here. I clearly remember being scared of a shadow as a kid. It wasn't fun.. not looking forward to dealing with it!

 

I also tell my kids that their stuffies are there to protect them from whatever is scaring them. I've heard good things about the "monster spray" too, but we never had to resort to that. Your girls are a little young yet, but what also helps is explaining to my kids that their imaginations are busy busy growing at night, and sometimes it thinks of scary things. There's really nothing to be afraid of, it's just their mind and their brains growing. I think around age 4 or so is when that started to help calm my kids down after nightmares.

 

We had a situation where we went to visit a potential daycare and they had a fish tank with some really ugly fish and my easy going, fun loving Gavin came unglued and nearly climbed all the way up me and onto my shoulders. I had never seen him react that way to anything. Well the he kept saying scary fishy in the car all the way home and then some at home. We tried everything – dismissing it – ignoring it – laughing it off – telling him he was bigger than the fish – so on. That night he woke up several times with nightmares about the stupid fish until I went and slept with him and every time he woke I would tell him fishy all gone - all.night.long. He didn’t have any more nightmares but did bring it up from time to time and we would just tell him fishy all gone. Not sure what convinced him to finally get over it but thank God he finally did. Needless to say we did not chose that daycare