Help dd age 2 terrified of sleeping

[UpJacobscreek]

It has only started the last couple of days ,she is not settled at all at night and is tossing and turning she keeps saying that the "clowns are going to get her"
don't know where she has got this from but have just tried to get her to have a sleep as she only managed 6 hours last night when she usually has 12 and she started saying stuff about the clowns again????

Any ideas or suggestions I hate seeing her so distressed.

Do you know where she got that idea?

I would be tempted to go through my little monster eviction ritual.

First we get some special Clown Deterring Magic dust (confetti). You can go buy that with her in a shop.

In the evening, before bedtime, you cleanse her room. You sprinkle the confetti, as you let her help you do that (I know it is messy)
As you sing:

Clown Clown go away,
dont come back for ever more

Clown Clown stay away
Let me sleep in peace each night

To the tone of rain rain go away.

it works with monsters, witches, werewolves, so why not also clowns??

Sorry I don't have any suggestions but bumping for you. I've just noticed my 2 year old becoming very aware of things like people dressed as animals, characters in books and halloween masks etc (she was very scared in the shop this morning) I don't know where she's getting it from as we've never refered to anything as scary or to be scared of. Obviously it's an age thing. I'm pretty certain my DD has also started to have bad dreams as she wakes in the night in a real state some days. Hopefully someone can offer some advice.

sorry dont have any advice but can sympathise, my dd is 2.4 and the last few nights/mornings she has been saying there is a 'scary man' and a scarecrow in her bedroom

I like quintessentialshadows suggestion, may have to give that a try if she doesnt calm, poor things

Thankyou all , quintessentialshadows I will definatley try that I was so upset for her last night you could feel her little heart thumping away when I carried her up and she ended up in bed with me which she has never done before.

I wonder if it could be Halloween she covered her eyes when she went past a display in a shop the other day .

It could be halloween. But I find it important when they are that age that they feel their fear is taken seriously, that they are not silly for being scared, and that positive action is taken, and that they feel they are part of actually DOING something to solve the problem. Together you make the clowns go away.

(Similar scenario is used under exorcism when blessing a house, olive oil blessed by a priest, make a cross above the doors with an oily finger while you say stuff like Bless this House, let all evil go. I dont know if it works, but you THINK it do. If you believe in that sort of thing - DONT DO THIS WITH YOUR CHILD!! - I dont know from where I know all this)