What do you do about monsters?

[chicaguapa]

DD is 2.5 and the latest development in our long saga of getting her to bed is that there's someone in her bedroom! There's a definite change in her behaviour at bedtime and she seems genuinely upset to go into her room.

I put this down to having watched Monsters Inc for the first time the other day and we've had problems since! She's not usually frightened of anything (she laughs at the shark in Finding Nemo) and I think most children go through this stage.

Will we be digging a huge hole for ourselves if we sit in her room until she goes to sleep or should we just stick to our guns and tell her there's no-one there?

We have just had the monsters thing with ds1 2.9 and we were very casual and told him that there weren't any monsters in our house, we coulnd't get any to come in, so sorry but we have no monsters.
It was an off the top of the head remark but it seems to work, maybe because it's not dismissive of his fears but pretty firm response.

HTH

My brother used to do this. He was scared of a character on a kids record called the Undercog, convinced that he lurked under his bed. My mum would go in and remove him every night before db went to bed!

Can't remember who it was but someone when I was little had a "monster box" (old biscuit tin) and would go in each night before bed and remove any lurking monsters.

We had this with our dd afetr Monsters Inc! (Though not neccesseraly at bedtimes).

I asked her about it,
" what colour is it, does it talk, what colour hair does it have, how big is it?...."

After a while i think she realised she was imagining it or just got bloody sick of me asking and the issue went away

Good luck

dd1 is a bit older, but she dresses up in her 'supergirl' outfit and 'kills' all the monsters. makes me laugh as she rushes thro all the bedrooms doing this and then tells me about it after.

We use various excuses with ds (3.5) like "we left all the monsters in la with the french girls" (tenants in my house in la), or "monsters are afraid of the dark", or "the monsters are on holiday this week" or "we locked the front door so they can't come in" etc. etc. etc. They all work. Though occasionally if the story is too far fetched, he doesn't believe it. I told him a long story once about a train going too fast and falling over and hurting its knee. He proceeded to spend the next half hour explaining to me that trains don't have knees.

One of mine was convinced a troll lived under his bed but as long as he jumped into bed rather than just got in normally, then it was okay, becaue the troll didn't have long enough arms to grab his ankles.

I think you have to go along with it to some extent, but take charge by searching for and evicting the monster each night or whatever makes your dd happy.

We are plagued by monsters under the bed too, and someone called Mrs Wallace. DH & I tell them very sternly to go away and don't come back, and pretend to be nearly knocked over by the rush of monsters hurtling down the stairs - this makes dd laugh and helps turn the monsters into figures of fun. We used to have to do this every night for a couple of months, but now it is just occasionally.
I have no idea where the Mrs Wallace character came from - I don't recall reading her any books with that name in it. Gawd help us if she ever has a teacher with that name .

doont know if this will work but my mother and remember this clearly used to say if theres a monster under your bed then it means they want to make friends butare to shy to talk to you so why dont you talk to them first and then when they are feeling a bit better they will come out and reply nicely
so i used to go into my bedroom every night get on my knees and say what my mum taught me to say
"monsters i know your shy but dont worry im going to bed now and i will see you soon
hope that helps you

this worked for us.... send daddy in to find the monster, if he finds it he can have a reward (sweet/money/treat), daddy goes in making lots of searching noises, only to come out disappointed that he can't have the reward as there are no monsters ANYWHERE.

soothepoo - Mrs Wallace..it isn't me..Honest!!!!

We had this at quite a young age with ds (just turned 2) and was primarily fear of dragons (no idea why - we think it was a theme park advert with a dragon in it that triggered it) and then evolved later into monsters in general.

We had three approaches:

Firstly I mentioned in my sternest voice possible that "Mummy didn't allow monsters or dragons in this house".

Then, I commented that did he know that Tigger (his favourite bedtime toy at the time) was a fantastic monster/dragon scarer and all the monsters/dragons were absolutely terrified of him.

Thirdly, I taught him my patent monster/dragon scaring technique should any sneak through after all that. It involves taking a deep breath and yelling as loud as possible... "one... two... three... BOO!"

So far, living monster/dragon free (except friendly nice ones of course...)

Georgina A - I find your post very reassuring

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I have used the same tactic with all three of my children, and it worked.

I take a favourite teddy bear, and tell the child that the monsters are afraid of it, and that it stays awake all night while the child is sleeping and scares the monsters away. And all because teddy loves the child so much. Aaah!

I've always gone with the line that monsters/ghosts etc. don't exist and there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of. Whilst being cuddly and nice too though and it worked for us.

I've heard of someone reassuring their child about monsters by spraying something in their room before bed (some sort of perfume or something), calling it 'monster spray' - not only deterring monsters, I guess if something with lavender in was sprayed, it may even induce sleep? Might be worth a try. My ds is 3 this summer & there's no talk of monsters so far...

My sister told her son that no monsters were allowed in her house and put up a notice on his bedroom door to that effect, which helped.

With our daughter it was crocodiles. We played endless games in the daylight where we were chased by crocodiles and successfully rescued each other, only to be chased again. Eviction rituals helped (Go away, crottydile, and don't you dare come in this bedroom again), especially when they were a bit funny. Sometimes our daughter surprised us by suddenly taking the part of the crocodile and making excuses for it or saying it was only a baby.

But I WISH I'd thought of mummysurfer's method, setting Daddy up as the fall-guy to prove there are no monsters around. She loves ganging up on Daddy with me, it would've been a surefire winner.

ds2 has still got a toy that he keeps on the bed to 'scare away' nasty dreams and monsters.

DP's goal keepers gloves were used as "Ghost-biffing" gloves when DD was convinced we were haunted. He would run around the house until there were none left!