Holy hysterical night terrors, Batman! Ivey has been out of her mind for weeks now. She cries when she goes to bed, wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, and even cries when she wakes up in the morning. It seems that she is going through one of those wonderful phases of insecurity... which manifests itself in nightmares. For her, she seems to mainly dream of scary animals. One night, it was a fox in her room. (This happened to be the same night that a critter got into my very poor attempt of a coop for our older chicks and devoured them all. Strange, no?) Another night, it was a wolf that was the antagonist of the night.
I asked her, "What is the wolf doing?"
"He's in my room." She answered.
"But, what is he DOING?", I repeat.
"He's SCARING ME!" Guess that answers that!
I have tried being nice, being firm, letting her sleep in bed with me... nothing helps. One night, we put her to bed and she sat up, reading. Later on, Jeff came upstairs to work on the computer. He heard a rustling of papers. He looked around... and saw nothing. The door to the girls' room was closed, so he knew it wasn't Ivey reading her book. It sounded closer. He heard it again. At that point, he got up and walked into our room. There, propped up on fluffy pillows, carefully tucked under our quilt, was Ivey.... flipping through a book. Jeff asked her what she was doing. "Laying in my bed.", she answered, matter of factly. He questioned her, "Who put you in my bed?" "I put ME in MY bed!" She answered. What. A. Mess.
Tonight, I decided to try a different approach to Ivey's fear of her bedroom. As I took her to bed, she started getting hysterical. She wanted the lights on.... She was scared. So, I pulled out a bottle of All-Purpose Animal Repellent. Let me tell you, this stuff was hard to come by. But, nothing is too good for my little girl and her fear of woodland creatures. I explained that I had "Fox Repellant" that would scare away any foxes. She asked about wolves. "Oh, yes! This will scare away wolves, too!" "Frogs?", she quivered. I explained to her that this was an all-purpose animal repellant that would scare away any and all animals from her room. The two of us sprayed a nice mist over the entire area. Then, it was time to get in bed. She stood, frozen. "Scared of my bed.", she said, softly. I helped her spray her bed thoroughly. Now, I'm not saying this is a complete success, but I will say that, although she had tears in her eyes, I left her room without hearing her screams... and she even muttered the words, "Thank you" as I left. Let's hope this stuff works... cause Momma needs some sleep!
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