Scared of Everything

To start off our boys are in the same room and have been for awhile now and sleeping awesome during naps and nighttime. Now Will has decided he is scared of everything. Last night it was thunder and rain. Today for naptime it was spiders...he swears one was in his bed. So I let him scream for awhile and carry one but then I felt bad for Zack. I pulled Zack out and let him lay in my room as Will screamed and beat on the door. Will finally pooped his pants(he's in a pull-up for naps) and told me he wanted to sleep on the futon in the spare room- and after a couple minutes of crying he fell asleep. Is this a power struggle we are having or do I just let him sleep in the spare room? We tried yelling, being nice, and ignoring him but nothing seems to work! Help me please!!!

 

I will probably be the odd man out in saying this, but I tend to be a bit of a softy when it comes to sleep. It very well might be a power struggle or he might very well be going through a scaredy stage. So, I am of the mind frame that as long as he is sleeping who cares where it is as long as it is not a big inconvenience for anyone else in the family...and they can fall asleep in said place on their own.

 

My second oldest went through a phase like this at around the same age, he was actually very frightened of everything and anything, he has a very vivid imagination and once he would be in bed, he would just start thinking about all sorts of things and would end up really scared, the only thing that worked was to just stay and talk with him about it, reassure him, overly check what he was afraid of. It passed eventually and yes it was frustrating at times, but i think a lot of children experience that at some point. Maybe there is something in his room that brings such anxiety that he would soil himself and cry so hard but be fine in another room??

 

We're going through that right now with Roycie. He's scared of the curtains (we removed them from the room.) He's scared of dragons, we gave him dragon spray (just a spray bottle with perfume in it because dragons don't like things that smell sweet.) He's scared of the crickets outside, (that we were able to talk to him about, no bugs in the house.) He's scared of the ghosts in the closet and whales (see if you can find my other thread, or I'll come back and link it, at least it's a funny story.) He's scared of the lights in their room but he doesn't want me to turn them off because he's scared of the dark.

It's rough, but by giving him the dragon spray, that took care of most of the scared issues, it gave him a tangible recourse against imaginary critters.

Of course, by day, he's super curious and currently hunting ghosts in the basement. He just has a terrific imagination.

 

My daughter went through a phase of night fear. The biggest thing that helped her was giving her a little flashlight that turns off on its own. That was the end of it for her. Hope that helps.