My beautiful little girl is having nightmares. She 's asking me questions about "baddies" and I'm struggling to answer them. For example, yesterday on our way to Ballet we passed a policeman who had pulled somebody over. Haidee thought this was cool and proceeded to tell us about the police force and all the things they do (it was very cute). Amelia started to get upset and said that she didn't want to hear anymore because it makes her worry that she's going to be a bad person. The convo went a little like this....
"Are people born bad Mummy?"
"No baby, people aren't born bad, sometimes they just make bad choices, mistakes that can get them in trouble"
"Are the police bad?"
"No, the police are there to help people bub"
"But I see them driving really fast and that's not allowed."
"Yes they do drive fast sometimes but usually it's because they're in a big rush to help someone. They use their sirens to let everybody know that they're coming so we can all be safe"
"I dreamt that the baddies caught you mummy and the police didn't help you at all. That's bad"
Wowsers! How do I reply to that? I was completely unprepared for this yesterday afternoon. My girl is a deep thinker and her thoughts can lead to dark places. It's horrible for her. She's been creeping into my bed the last few nights because she's afraid that I'm going to be nabbed!
I told her that I'm not going anywhere and left it at that. For now anyways. She went into her ballet class and came out beaming. I was relieved.
I still struggle with my childhood fear. I was/am deathly afraid of Mannequins. It all started with the clip below From Dr Who.
*WARNING* Seriously freaky footage!
I still don't like them. As a child I kept it to myself. I remember when Mum brought home two of them to use at her school. She named them Napoleon and Josephine and kept them in our dining room for a week. They were particularly creepy, circa 1974. It was awful!
She didn't know about my fear because I never had the confidence as a child to tell her. I thought she'd think I was "odd". It's seems so silly now because my mother would have been wonderful about it. Had I of let her know I'm sure she would have said the perfect thing to make it all better. I wish I did, because now I'm finding it difficult to soothe my little girls fears.
She had a good night last night and is currently sitting with her sister eating their muesli. Her best friend at school has a father who is a policeman. I'm thinking I might ask him to talk to her out of uniform. We'll see.
What about you? Have you had similar issues with your children? Or perhaps you have a childhood fear? Any advice would be most appreciated.
Ta.
Alisa x
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4 comments:
I call my monkeys bub too-
I am blunt with my kids about death- whenever they have fears about someone dying I would say that of course we all will and that hopefully it won't happen until we are very old.
Poor little tike... the world's a scary place. Richard was scared of The Wizard Of Oz when he was a child, and still hates the film. You are a good mum Alisa.
Well first up, brilliant that she is talking about it, open & free, she's comfortable that you can make ALL her problems, worries & issues disappear. You're a wonderful mum. Second, it's just a phase, i know that sounds a bit blase but they can say these things which you can over analyse, then they have moved onto something completely different by the time you've found a solution.
It's a good opportunity, if this particular 'baddies' concern continues, to help her solve her own problems & work through them. Just keep asking her why she feels this way, why she's asking. They take things so literally, a crime stoppers ad might have put the fear of criminals in her head!!
My fears, oh, clowns, hello, i'm not alone, clowns are evil.
Good luck, talking stops things from festering, be really honest, i am very up front with mine, about cancer, death, wars - all things they've had to deal with in our immediate family, they know for us, it's all part of life. Sure they worry, there are tears, it teaches them emotion, uncertainty & being sad is completely OK too. Love Posie
Oh dear, I hope she's feeling better about it all now? We're on a farm so life and death is accepted (its not nice, but it happens). Living relatively isolated does have its problems though - they think everyone is good and friendly and its taken some deep conversations to explain that there are not so nice people out there, but at the same time being careful not to scare them. A fine line to tread.
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