The pretend monster.

I remember being afraid of the dark. I even admit that once in a while I may walk faster than needed up the stairs from the basement late at night.

I am, however having a very hard time knowing how to deal with my children's sudden terror at walking up to the bathroom in the evening, even if the light is on. I am told that Victors room is scary. I am finding the fear of the dark to be draining and obnoxious. I realize nearly every kid goes through this. It is common and normal. I HATE it.

I was losing my temper with Naomi over it the other night. I know that that isn't a great plan. She really is terrified and yelling at her over it isn't going to improve the situation. I honestly think part of my problem is that I feel partly guilty about it. A while ago we had a neighbor boy over to play. He is a great story teller. My kids eat up every word. So we all went through the house with a flashlight pretending to find monsters. OK so Brahim and I were pretending to find monsters, I didn't realize that Naomi and Victor were 100% convinced there really were monsters in our house. Had I realized they were scared out of their minds the game would have ended MUCH sooner. So since that point Naomi won't go up stairs after dark on her own, thankfully during the day she isn't like that. I don't know what I would do if she was that upset.

We have managed to convince them that the monster is pretend. It appears that that is only an adjective, like saying he is yellow. Yes he is pretend, still just as horrific, but he is pretend. Naomi will even talk about the fact that she can hear the pretend monster breathing in the basement. I guess we need to go over the definition of "pretend".

She pretends to be a Ninja Turtle (Raphael for those interested), but simply refuses to pretend she is any kind of monster or powerful being when a trip to the bathroom is needed. Why does the imagination only work when they want it to?!

I guess in the back of my mind I knew someday I would have to deal with the dark issue. They have been so good about it for so long, too good I guess. Now I get to deal with the fact that my kids really are kids and really are afraid of perfectly normal things. Grrr. Maybe that is better than being afriad of wierd things, I don't know.