2 year old traumatised by monster book, nightmares last night, and today at nap time

[AlaskaHQ]

Totally exhausted 2 year old DD.

Without thinking about consequences, DH read her a book called "The Monsters are Coming" last night at bed time. Found it on the bookshelf in DS (4 years old)'s room.

Nightmares & screaming last night. Very clingy all morning. Woke again screaming from nap 30 minutes ago. Has since just wanted to sit snuggled on my lap.

What do I do?

(Apart from banning DH from choosing bedtime reading....)

I've tried lots of remedies for the nighttime fearies and really it's only time that helps but both my two loved either pretending to chase the monster out of the house (with great gusto) and putting a magic spell on the room to prevent anything horrible getting in (words to suit yourself). I still do that occasionally now if they have the heebie-jeebies.

We have a bottle of monster spray for just such occasions. (It's lavender air freshener.) DS tells me where to spray it and apparently the scary monsters don't like it so they stay away. The friendly monsters like it, so that's ok.

With DS, saying they weren't real didn't help at all - to him they were real so I was just lying. I had to join in with him but steer him away from scary monsters to friendly ones.

And I'd probably be having words with DH!

I think it was an honest mistake by DH ... he is normally brilliant with DS & DD.

Bottle of monster spray sounds good. She unfortunately doesn't talk much yet, so I can't get too much out of her as to what exactly is wrong, although she clearly led me by the hand to the book and pointed at the two smallest monsters very clearly, then cried.