Monsters under the bed! Poor little ds seems genuinly frightened.

[Mintyy]

I believe this is a common fear in little children, but why is it, and what do we do about it?

Any experience? Ds is 5.6 btw and is otherwise a confident, happy, typical little boy type chap.

I blocked the underneath of dd1's bed with old blankets and pillows and she has a 'magical' dinosaur teddy who comes to life in the night and likes eating monsters.

Can't you get some monster repellant spray?

I used to get DD to spray under her bed before she went to bed (water with a couple of drops of lavender oil seems to keep them at bay)

DS quite likes the company of his monsters - nutter

I used to kick monsters out with my big teddy bear sleepers. I love the idea of the "monster repellent spray"!

i'm still scared of monstors under the bed and i'm 25 in a few weeks

Get yourself some spray PT

My mum bought me a big torch when I had sharks at the bottom of my bed. The idea was to blind them with the light and then bash them on the head with the torch.

It worked a treat.

It's amazing how many gadgets are our there to get rid of the blighters - sharks at the end of your bed - scary!!!!!

Maybe you should ask him if he knows what would get rid of them? Let him choose? A torch? Spray? Blocking them in? etc etc

Yes, but WHO gives children these ideas?! When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me that I had to make sure my closet doors were shut otherwise Dracula (who resided in the closet, naturally) would get out. I'm pretty sure she came up with that. Now I look back, it was slightly evil.....

My Aunty told me that moths would crawl into my ears and eat my brains. My mum told her when she was young. I still cannot sleep in a room that has a moth in it.

She also let my 6 year old sister watch Poltergeist, she still cannot sleep in a room with mirrors unless they are covered with a towel.

DS had a book from nursery with a monster that was scared of children, I will ask his teacher today for the title/author. I remember he loved it!

oddly enough as a child during the day one of my favourite places to hide was under my bed.... but at night a little trap door would open and the monstors would come through... little monstors but if you put your foot too close to the edge of the bed they'd grab you, swarm on you and drag you down the trp door.

i was an expert at diving onto my bed from across the room

mcdreamy.... don't need spray as i have dp who is a expert monstor basher (and obviously also very tolerant of my craziness!)

iwiwotb... my parents certainly didn't, they were always very dismissive of all that stuff, think i came up with my crazy fears all by myself

Oh look at all these messages.

You know, I never thought about acknowledging the presence of monsters and actually finding a means to thwart them! I always go down the "don't worry there's no such thing as monsters" route.

I love some of your remedies. Will definitely try the anti monster lavender spray tonight and report back .

Thanks ladies.

this is the book I mentionned yesterday

sorry for delay.

Our standard mantra was

"You know how Daddy hates strangers coming into the house. Well, what ever makes you think he would allow monsters in? He just wouldn't!"

Mind you, we had some explaining to do about Father Christmas!

Monsters/sharks/scary clowns etc are all real to children so we do the folowing:

We pick up our monsters from under the bed and take them to the front door and send them home to their Mummy's because it is bedtime and they are going to listen to a story.

Sharks in the bath get thrown out of the window.

The scary clowns get a 'magic circus wand' waved at them and they go back to the circus to see the ring master.