How to help my child to not be afraid?

[jujumm]

Hi everyone - 4am, and I got to breaking point. I need advice! I will give you context:

Someone in school told my child (7 year old) a scary story (the one about the "Blue Baby" - and here I was blissfully thinking we had only Bloody Mary to deal with). This was about three weeks ago.

Since then, she is waking us up in the middle of the night, wanting to come into our room, etc, because she is scared and can't go back to sleep. Times vary - today it was at 3h45! When she wakes she takes forever to fall asleep, if she does. This keeps us awake, and by the time she has settled (usually in our bed) my husband and I can't go back to sleep ourselves. A couples of times we took her back to her room, but just stayed there sleeping on the floor. Add to that the fact that we have a 1-year-old baby and very demanding jobs, we are exhausted beyond description.

More worryingly, this is impacting her: she is very obviously tired in the morning, but needs to go to school and get on with her day. When she is at home later, you can see she is struggling to concentrate on her homework. And of course, the fact that you are "living" with fear must be quite distressing, and she has gone from a great sleeper with a routine for the last 7 years, to suddenly being very anxious about bedtime (and then waking up in the middle of the night).

We have tried everything we can think of to try and help her, but nothing is working. I now wonder if she just knows there is a default position where she can just wake us up.

We had childhood fears to deal with her before (the usual, ghosts, vampire, Bloody Mary which someone told her about a while ago) but it never got this bad to the point of waking in the middle of the night. And not for this long.

Any magic bullets to help sort out these fears? Have you gone through something similar? What did you do? Or is is just a "time will heal" situation and we have to just ride it out, however long it takes? Any insights, suggestions, similar stories, would be helpful. I am at breaking point, feeling worse than when I had a newborn waking 3+ times a night!

Forgot to add: I am not proud but today when she woke us up at 3h45, my immediate reaction was to start crying, sobbing. I am so exhausted, that I could not hold back the tears. I didn't tell her off, I just told her to stay in bed with my husband and I came to the living room. But she saw me crying and I told her it is because I am so so tired because of the lack of sleep, and that she needed to get better otherwise I will break down. Not a proud moment, which brought me here.

Don’t worry. We all get to breaking point with tiredness at times. What is the blue baby story if you don’t mind me asking? Never heard of it.

@PineappleVision it is a version of this: www.scaryforkids.com/baby-blue/

Oh gosh! Yes that’s horrible. Well she’s having a normal reaction to a horrible story. She obviously has a very good imagination which is not in her favour in this scenario. Do you know who is telling her these stories? Someone at school?
I see you have tried everything so I guess you’ve already tried talking about it with her and explaining that none of these stories are true. That they are made up to scare people. Some people like scary stories and movies and some do not. She does not so the story is of no use to her. I wonder about doing something physical to try to let go of the stories that are of no use and welcome good stories in their place. Example, after she’s woken and is calming from the upset, write down something like ‘scary stories are of no use to me’ and have her write it or have her colour a bright pattern around it. Then have a box that she can put it into. Then, say now we will listen to a story that is useful and play an audiobook of a happy story about something she’s in to. Hopefully she’ll fall asleep listening to it. Would also say the same for you and DH. Listen to an audiobook. Because when your mind is full of worry about her you can’t relax. Just a suggestion.

That's horrible. I only read the beginning but that would give me nightmares as well. Your poor DD. My DD scares easily as well and has a very active imagination. Same age. But she gets scared about much more harmless things (like Ben and holly...). I guess this isn't what you want to hear but dh does have to sleep on her floor most nights.

One thing that sometimes helps when DD is scared about something in particular is to create a new narrative about it. E.g. she was super scared after somebody told her about Voldemort so I started telling her stories about how Voldemort has become a good guy now who regrets his evil ways and has recently opened up a restaurant but keeps getting the orders wrong and cooks disgusting food. So just something to get this guy out of evil territory into bumbling but cuddly fool territory. In this instance it worked a treat and for a while he was her favourite imaginary friend who'd accompany us to the playground, etc. Doesn't always work though and it took a while.