Sirrahsim
04-12-2007, 12:17 PM
Did any of you have "monster spray" when you were kids??
Yesterday Tyler and I snuggled up and watched Monsters Inc. together. I was keeping a close eye on him to make sure that nothing scared him and nothing seemed to at all. Unfortunately he woke up in the wee hours of the morning absolutely terrified of his room!! We asked him if he needed to lay down with us or if he wanted us to lay down with him but he just wanted to get as far from his bedroom as he could. After all of our efforts to reassure him that we were there for him and that nothing could get to him he was still pretty scared :( Finally after Daddy had checked the closet and under the bed I remembered what my parents did for me when I was a kid and was scared of monsters. They would spray some sort of perfume or body spray and tell me that it was monster spray and that they couldn't come anywhere near me because they didn't like the smell or something to that effect. That would comfort me enough to lay back down and I'd be breathing so deeply to make sure that I could smell the monster spray that I'd go right to sleep.
Psychologists today would probably pick it to pieces saying that I'm somehow damaging his delicate psyche blah blah blah, but I'd like to see them convince a not quite 2 year old in the wee hours of the morning that his fears are all in his head!!!
So I grabbed a bottle of body splash and we made a show of Daddy spraying it in his room and in the closet. Just like that his room wasn't scary anymore. Besides asking us to unplug the "scary circle" (small round nightlight) he was happy to lay back down and was sound asleep when I checked on him about 20 minutes later.
It made me smile to use a technique on my little boy that my parents used on me so many years ago. :) When he gets older we can explain that monsters are pretend, but for now we'll use Monster Spray :)
Yesterday Tyler and I snuggled up and watched Monsters Inc. together. I was keeping a close eye on him to make sure that nothing scared him and nothing seemed to at all. Unfortunately he woke up in the wee hours of the morning absolutely terrified of his room!! We asked him if he needed to lay down with us or if he wanted us to lay down with him but he just wanted to get as far from his bedroom as he could. After all of our efforts to reassure him that we were there for him and that nothing could get to him he was still pretty scared :( Finally after Daddy had checked the closet and under the bed I remembered what my parents did for me when I was a kid and was scared of monsters. They would spray some sort of perfume or body spray and tell me that it was monster spray and that they couldn't come anywhere near me because they didn't like the smell or something to that effect. That would comfort me enough to lay back down and I'd be breathing so deeply to make sure that I could smell the monster spray that I'd go right to sleep.
Psychologists today would probably pick it to pieces saying that I'm somehow damaging his delicate psyche blah blah blah, but I'd like to see them convince a not quite 2 year old in the wee hours of the morning that his fears are all in his head!!!
So I grabbed a bottle of body splash and we made a show of Daddy spraying it in his room and in the closet. Just like that his room wasn't scary anymore. Besides asking us to unplug the "scary circle" (small round nightlight) he was happy to lay back down and was sound asleep when I checked on him about 20 minutes later.
It made me smile to use a technique on my little boy that my parents used on me so many years ago. :) When he gets older we can explain that monsters are pretend, but for now we'll use Monster Spray :)