My 3 year old has developed a fear of all the things. Generically "I'm scared" and clingy beyond belief, primarily to me and DH if I'm not around. Bedtime is a nightmare- I write this at 10:22, she's still wide awake and refuses to let us leave her room, which only prolongs her calming down because she's normally a very independent kid and sleeper. She's been waking up crying at 3 am and taking an hour plus to go back to sleep. Mama is exhausted. Any tips, ideas? We've been talking about what's scary a lot, but it seems to get very acute at bedtime and no specifics so I have no idea how to deal with it properly. I'm giving her as much comfort as I can but I'm not sure it's enough.
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I find that with my son, the most effective way to deal with fears is to show him that they are natural and normal and that I have them too.
My son has been having bad dreams, he says. I try to ask him what the content is, but he has a difficult time articulating, so I tell him that I have had bad dreams too, and what was happening in mine (falling down, getting hurt, etc) and he said the same thing was happening in his dreams. That seemed to help him.
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Weirdly, what helped my son was to let him sleep with my stuffed animal from my childhood. If he wakes up scared in the middle of the night, I give it to him. He says it "protects him with mommy power". Lol
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We like a giant stuffed bear, a projector nightlight to watch and calm down to, music or stories on CD, and Hylands Calm and Restful tablets.
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This may or may not work.... buy a bottle of linen spray (lavender scent?). If you want, create a label that said monster repeler. Each night, right before bedtime, spray her bed with it and let her see it, and explain to her that you got this and once it is sprayed on it is good through the night and it repels scary things, and it protects the person who sleeps in it. In order for it to work she has to remain in bed and be quiet and go to sleep. If she wakes up at 3am, just spray it again and explain it should work just fine now. Don't leave it within her reach or I don't know what would happen ;-). We had a similar phase earlier and that's what I did. I hope it works for you?
On top of that, can you turn on the light outside of her room and let the light come into her room a bit? I was going to say nightlight too, but DS has nightlights in his room, apparently it is not enough for him and unfortunately we had to turn the lights at the stairways on (right outside of his room) throughout the night. If we turned it off and he wakes up and sees it he'd cry. We just had to switch them to energy efficient bulbs...
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DS turns 3 next month and started using the word scary and being scared of stuff. No idea where he learned it from (daycare maybe). Sometimes he plays about it like omg! it's scary then tells me, it's okay mommy. it's not scary. lol
Other times, he's actually scared. Like all of the sudden, shadows at night scare him and they never have before. He used to think they were funny and cool. No amount of reassurance that we're right here and that it's okay soothes him. Sigh.
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@Alivoo01: We're in the same boat - she just won't hear any assurances. Partly I think she's starting to stall on bedtime as much as possible, and she's saying I'm scared to get us to stay in her room (I don't have the power to leave her crying), but the waking and crying is definitely fear related. It was thunderstorming last night and she woke up early this morning crying that the thunder was outside (even though she loves thunder usually).
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