In the last month or so, my generally confident 5 year old has become very anxious about being somewhere in the house alone. We live in a 2 bedroom condo so there aren’t a lot of nooks and crannies to be fearful of. She started having issues going to sleep alone a year ago, so we’ve been laying down with her since then. She’s occasionally gotten nervous about dark rooms, but usually she’d go and turn the light on while one of us was watching and assuring her. Now even in daylight she loses it about going to the bathroom alone. She’s waking up more frequently because of bad dreams. It’s all seemingly driven by an extremely robust imagination (giant spiders, cobras, all kinds of amazing stories about what’s awaiting her in the unknown) and I think her mind is in overdrive as she’s adapting to kinder. I’m not sure how to best help and I’ve tried a lot to no avail (rationalization, which usually works well with her; monster spray, kissing hand, you name it). Short of becoming her shadow, I’m at a loss and would love suggestions. Ironically she has no separation anxiety with school or staying with my mom, because they’re other people, this is solely not wanting to be alone.
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You may have already tried this, but empathzing with her? "Being alone is scary! You don't like going to the bathroom alone/being alone in the room while i shower/etc. I get scared sometimes too, of XYZ. What should I do when I'm scared?" Or maybe have her play with her dolls/animals and have them practice being alone?
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@Mrs. Carrot: is this fear coming from anything she watches on tv? With DD we noticed that some scenes of disney movies and even scoobydoo made her afraid of sleeping alone
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If she's complaining about anything specific, you could try borrowing a Harry Potter trick - make the scary thing ridiculous. DS gets wound up by something (TV? classmates' stories?) now and then, and then can't fall asleep because he's imagining something scary. He knows it's not real, but it's keeping him up. So we try stuff like imagining that the scary robot got repainted, or that the dragon ate a bar of soap and keeps blowing bubbles instead of flames. Seems to help!
As for being scared to go to an empty parr part of the house alone... they do that if it's dark and they need the light turned on. I just roll with it, turn the light on for them, and leave - it's faster than arguing with them that there's nothing to be scared of.
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I vote for empathizing with her and just trying to be rational about it. I was a kid who was scared to go to the bathroom alone when I was younger... I grew up in an old farmhouse... the bathroom was through 3 dark rooms which had all kinds of scary creeking noises and places for things to hide
my brother and I would make pacts to go with one another bc it was legit scary!!!! Obviously not the same situation but I think if our parents had gone with us and turned on the lights or something that we wouldn't have been so scared..... our parents just made us deal with it bc "there was nothing to be scared of" and we should get over it....and I can tell you that it didn't work bc we were still scared!!
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@Mrsbells: She seems to be extrapolating some of the things she's seeing into real/larger things. IE, the cobras come from Wild Kratts, a favorite of hers, as do the spiders. She's not afraid of watching them on TV and even wants to know more about them, but her brain is then making them real threats in our house (vs something mythical, like a witch). Another was aliens walking around in the dark because they're coming on Voyager 1 and 2 (my husband told her about the Voyagers exploring space where no one has gone before). Because she has such a huge absorption rate for information, I tried using some of this to talk about how cobras live far away from Virginia and they couldn't get here in any way, and how Voyagers will take another 40 years to even get to where they're going and another 100 to come back, and that helps sometimes, but most times it also turns into a bigger story about how cobras can sneak on a plane and slither to our house from the airport that's 5 minutes away. So yeah... lol
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@Mama Bird: I like the idea of turning it into something else, thanks! The dark thing I understood, but this is now also happening when it's light out and because we're in a condo, we have a wall of windows so there are no dark spaces, really. I definitely empathize but I just literally can't always step away from something cooking or whatever else to go with her, so that's why I'd love to figure out how to make things less scary.
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@Ajsmommy: I totally get that, and that's why I'm happy to go with her when it's dark and why we lay down with her every night until she falls asleep. I know it's a phase and it'll pass; right now it's just becoming such that she basically wants me to follow her anywhere and everywhere in the house and stay there with her. She won't play in her room on her own, even though it's bright and within eyesight of anywhere I might be, same with the bathroom, which is perfectly lit during the day, etc.I totally get this is developmental and will pass, but I hate seeing her melt down when I can't go somewhere with her because I'm cooking dinner or whatever else I can't leave at that moment, so I'd like to at least help her cope in the short term.
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@Mrs. Carrot: ah ok sounds like a very active imagination! Hope some of the tips others have mentioned help
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My DD (4.5) went through something like this for a few weeks over the summer. She flipped out if I wasn’t in her sight line and I can’t even count the number of times I heard her yell “Mommy, where are you going?” She was my constant shadow when I peed, did laundry, took out the trash, etc. I’m not sure what caused it—she didn’t mention any scary things like spiders or snakes, just that she didn’t want to be alone—but DH was away for several weeks for work, so I’m sure that played into it. Once things settled back down to normal, it got better, but I really just had to wait it out. DD has never liked being alone and still doesn’t, but now at least I can stand on the other side of the open fridge door without her losing her mind. Sorry I can’t help much, but I totally empathize.
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You might like the book Growing Up Brave
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My son has being going through a similar phase lately. We let him sleep with the lamp on at night and that solves the problem. When I remember, I turn it off before I go to bed, but I often forget so it’s on all night. We’ve talked about how there’s nothing to be afraid of, he’s perfectly safe and there is nothing scary, but he has a big imagination, so I know it’s difficult to rationalize. Luckily, the lamp is comfort enough for him, and he’s only afraid of the dark at night.
my brother and I would make pacts to go with one another bc it was legit scary!!!! 
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