to actually consider a psychic to sort out my daughter's sudden fear of her room..

[brightongirldownunder]

OK, I know I'm being a prat, but I'm at my wits end with this situation. Over the past 4 days DD refuses to sleep in her bedroom. She lies there with scared, wide eyes and tells me the windows have been rattling. It freaked me out too...
She'll happily play with her toys in there but as soon as she has to get into bed to lie down, she starts screaming.
She's 2.5 yrs old, with an extremely vivid imagination, but she normally loves her sleep and her bed.
Gaahhhh....I'm knackered.............

It's a daft idea, sorry. She is picking up on the feeling that you are scared. Sleep with her for a couple of nights, gradually leave in the middle of the night, reduce to leaving after she falls asleep, leave a night light on.

She will get over it when you do

Oh I know Laurie, I just don't understand it. She's obsessed with the rattling windows. I've never seen her like this before - real fear. I've tried everything - tonight I drew pictures of all of her friends and stuck them on the curtains (hmm - maybe that made things worse).
Plus her thomas the tank engine ride on occasionally goes off in the middle of the night without anyone touching it.
I'm a paranoid wreck...

I don't think you need to understand 2.5 year old fears, they don't generally make sense to us.
My dd used to get totally freaked out by a doorstop in the shape of a cat at my parents' house.
And some toys do go off by themselves - we had a very annoying musical ball that did that from time to time.

Definitely agree with Laurie.

Can you not jam something in the window frame to stop it from rattling?

Take the Thomas toy out of her room over night too maybe.

My DD went through a phase of being scared to go to bed at night so we created monster spray (adapt as you like)- some air freshener spray. We told DD it keeps the monsters away and she was safe and sound. A quick squirt in the room while saying good night sorted the problem out very quickly!

I hope this helps!

Talk to your DD about her fear. Don't dismiss it, but come up with solutions; if she's afraid of monsters, tell her that [a favourite soft toy] scares monsters away, so she only has to cuddle it tight/make it go Grrr at the windows. Do a routine monster check at bedtime; under the bed, in the cupboard etc, showing her there are none. Come up with a ritual/short series of words you/she can say to feel safe; enable her to take control.

And take the batteries out of Thomas!

"Famous" American psychic John Edward is in town in the next few weeks, was thinking of calling on his services
No, in all seriousness I see what you mean, she's probably picking up on me panicking (more about her suddenly dropping her midday sleep to be honest). I'll try and relax and sleep by her for the next few days.

hmm, i'm just not sure about this monster business, i tell dd that there's no such thing. surely the thought of monsters at the window is scary even if a certain toy or spray is keeping them at bay? doesn't it reinforce the belief that rattling windows are something to be scared of?

Thomas is downstairs, so it was only me that was getting freaked out by it!
The reason I stuck the faces of her friends on the windows was to make them "happy windows", which she agreed they were - plus I rearranged her room to make it extra specially lovely today, but still the same reaction...
I suppose its all about patience.

We don't mention monsters at all. Monsters have already caused enough problems here.

Ok I'm going to take a deep breath and go against current opinion and say maybe there might be 'something else' frightening her. When we moved into our house my ds slept in the back bedroom and he used to spend alot of time at night when we put him to bed talking to people who he said would come and visit him at night. He told us their names and described them in lots of details (age, clothes they wore etc).

It didn't seem to bother him but it would take him to ages to go to sleep because of the chatting and it did freak me and dh out a bit. Especially as its an old house and other strange and unexplained things have happened in the time we've lived here.

Eventually out of sheer desperation I did speak briefly to a medium (friend of friend) and she said that children are very suseptable (sp!!) to visits as they don't have the social conditioning as yet to dismiss as most adults do and that what we needed to was to go into ds's room and politely ask whoever it was 'visiting' to stop as ds needed his sleep. We did this (feeling utterly stupid as we did it and whilst ds was at nursery just to test the theory) and from that night on he stopped chatting at night to his 'friends'.

Freaky I know and I'm completely expecting many of you to shout 'weirdo' at me but all I can say is it worked for us so maybe try that if you're really desperate??

Not mentioning monsters doesn't make them go away, though. [uncertain emoticon]

Holy cow Singstar.

Holy cow Singstar!!!!

Sorry, one holy cow is enough.

Well, Singstar, I guess it couldn't hurt if the OP did something similar.

My MIL told me that when she was young, there was a lady that would come and sit in her room at bedtime - it was only when she was older that she realised that it wasn't normal, and she felt all freaked out by it!

Isn't 2.5 a normal age for children to start having irrational fears? Don't dismiss her fears, but show her that the window is rattling because of the wind etc.

Should have said - not a real lady - a ghost!

DOn't pay a psychic, they are all either well-meaning deluded idiots or out and out con-artists. Either 'protective' room spray (a plant mister will do fine, I wouldn't personally be wild about spraying aerosols round a kids' bedroom) or a special bodyguarding cuddly are usually the most effective for this sort of thing.

Dd2 has a dream catcher at her window and periodically we remind it to "keep the bad dreams" away.

It works most of the time.

that was for the ghosty stories...

Yeah it was v strange, the weirdest part of it was that he'd leave gaps in the chatter, as though he was having an actual conversation. And he'd bring it up the next day like 'Arthur said he likes my new shoes' (we don't know anyone called Arthur)

there is NO way I'm going to be able to go to sleep now (its 1:20am in Sydney)

DH's Grandparents bought this house brand new so we know exactly who's lived and died here during it's whole history.

DS started with "ghosts" (his word not mine) a few weeks after we swapped rooms with him to make way for his little sister. His new room is the only one that someone has died in (his Great Grandfather)

It's spooky but I'm pretty sure it's just a co-incidence. DS is 2 and a half and this seems a prime time for Monsters to start causing problems. Friends of ours have a water spray bottle of "Monster repellent" that seems to do the trick

I agree with SolidGhoulBrass, by the way, don't pay a medium as you might get some con artist who'll play on your already apparent fears but there is no harm in doing what we did -other than feeling like a prat whilst doing it

If you do decide to do it, I'd be interested to know if it works or if my family is the only weird one out there !