Dirty socks on bedposts to keep the spooks away, DIY ‘monster spray’ and good old fashioned bribery … Is your child afraid to sleep alone? Have you pulled any of these genius moves when things go bump in the night?
There’s no doubt that raising children is something that shifts with the generations … technology and societal changes will always bring new challenges and issues for parents that their own might not have faced. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that kids still seem to get spooked by the dark by monsters and creepy things that live under their bed.
It’s fair enough, really: the dark is scary and, to be honest, there’s so much crap under my bed there could be a family of monsters living there and I wouldn’t know about it.
Kids are always going to find things scary – that’s perfectly natural. What’s important is how you choose to deal with the things that spook them. And some parents, well, they’ve gone full Ghostbusters in their approach and we’re not worthy.
Child Afraid to Sleep Alone: Parents’ Strategies
Parenting level: Genius
“So, my kiddo has been complaining recently about monsters in her room,” one person posted to reddit, adding, “She’s 2 1/2, and thinks every weird shape or shadow is a monster, as is tradition.”
Yep. You gotta investigate them ALL – you never know which one might be a baddie.
The poster continued that after a few nights of “monster hunts” they had “a stroke of genius: The monsters are there to protect you! They eat bad guys and keep you safe.”
Within minutes, her demeanour changed and he left her room with her “shouting out to any bad guys that the monsters were gonna eat them.”
Parenting level? Genius.
Is your child afraid to sleep alone? The monsters are there to keep you safe. Image: iStock
Smelly socks and monster spray
Naturally, this post opened the floodgates, with people sharing their own strategies for dealing with those pesky nighttime intruders.
“When I was young I convinced my brother that putting my smelly socks on his bedposts would keep any monsters away,” one said.
Plenty admitted to arming their kids with ‘monster spray’ to get through the night. “When I was really young my older sister gave me a bottle of deodorant and said that if I sprayed it all of the monsters would leave and go up into the clouds or some shit,” one said, adding “It smelt good and it made me feel safe so I sprayed it every night before I went to sleep.”
Another parent went further, saying they took air freshener and “taped some sort of makeshift label that said ‘monster spray’ on it … Never saw a monster after that,” they joked, remarking, “Bonus points for having a good smelling room!”
One mum, however, admitted her husband went down a slightly different direction with his monster-busting … “Our daughters were about 5 and 6 at the time. They kept coming into our room EVERY SINGLE night for months telling us there was a monster in their closet.
One night my husband had had enough and he checked the closet for them. Then he said “Holy cow!! You’re right! There’s a monster in there, and he said if you get out of bed again he’s gonna eat you!!” Not the best technique, but it was effective,” she said, adding, “They didn’t get out of bed anymore.”
LOL.
Do you have nighttime wanderers? Image: iStock
Get some ‘nighttime helpers’ to keep watch
Another genius hack was enlisting some ‘nighttime helpers’ to keep a watch on their children, like protective charms, toys, even the family pet. “We had a cat who loved our daughters. The girls knew he was up all night exploring the house,” one parent said, “When they started the monster stuff I just told them that cats eat monsters and he hunts them at night. It just made them love him even more.”
Another positioned a dinosaur at the head of his four-year-old’s bed and said, “he will stomp his feet on the bad guys, bite them with his teeth, then hit them with his tail so hard they will fly away very far,” he added his son LOVED the idea and the dinosaur is now there every night
But it wasn’t just bad guys, parents were sharing all sorts of ‘hacks’ to cure their kids’ phobias.
“We recently moved to a state that gets lots of thunder,” one woman said, adding, “My 3yo was terrified at first until my husband blurted out ‘oh, that’s just the sky farting!’ Now, every time we hear thunder my daughter erupts with laughter and squeals about how the sky just farted.”
The sky is farting. Genius. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself.
This article was first published in KidSpot and republished on theAsianparent with permission.
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