Xander Week 125 – Monsters (again)!
July 31, 2009Last year around Halloween Xander decided that he was terrified of monsters. Monsters were going to get him at every turn. He was convinced that they were going to get his toes while he slept (he slept in socks for at least 6 months) and getting him to sleep every night was a challenge. There were many nights that he fell asleep in my arms because he would not or could not go to sleep any other way. At some point we finally convinced Xander that he was safe, no monsters were going to “get him”. He’s been sleeping great for the past six months. Now, all of the sudden, the monster fear is back. It doesn’t matter what I tell him or how I try to convince him, he is certain that monsters are going to get him. He doesn’t want to sleep in his bed, he doesn’t want to go to school, the poor kid is terrified of some monster somewhere, and I don’t know how to help him. I do know that we started putting Xander to sleep at 7:30 last night, and we were still fighting with him at 9:00pm to go to sleep. And then at 1am he crawled into bed with us, and since Parker was also not sleeping, we were too tired to protest at that point.
We’ve tried reassuring Xander that he is safe, no monsters can get him, that Mommy and Daddy would never let anyone or anything hurt him. I’ve told him that we have the whole house sprayed in monster protection spray and that monsters can’t get in. I set up a flashlight to point into his closet so that he could see there were no monsters in there. We’ve tried empowering him, telling him to squish or punch any monsters that he sees. I’m running out of ideas, and in my sleep-deprived state, I’m not sure what else I can do to reassure my son…
I’m leaving for a conference on Sunday for work. This is the first conference I’ve been to since 2005 – well before Xander was born. Aside from 1 week when Xander was 6 months old, this is the longest I will have been away from my children, ever. And I have never left them home with their dad, not even for one overnight. It sounds bad when I write it that way, but it hasn’t been intentional – it just hasn’t worked out that I’ve needed to be away from home for long. I have complete faith that everything will be just fine at home while I’m gone. I know that it’s a lot of work to juggle our two boys, but Zach can handle it. Their clothes might not match when they leave for day care, and they might have a few crumbs still smeared on their faces, but they’ll be clean, and well fed and happy.
Every once in a while I find an “incident report” taped to Xander’s cubby at school. These reports are usually an explanation of some minor injury Xander sustained during play time. He’s two and these sorts of things happen regularly and don’t surprise us anymore. Once in a while the incident report contains additional information explaining that another child was responsible for said injury (a bite, a whack to the head, etc.) I’ve seen other parents get incident reports explaining that their child was the cause of injury to another child. Xander hasn’t ever had one of those incident reports (thankfully!!) But after receiving the latest report of Xander getting injured by another child, I started to wonder if perhaps my kid is a perpetual victim. Does he have some sort of inate personality trait that makes him more attractive to bullies? Is he able to assert himself when necessary? Is this something that I can teach to a two year old? Is this a problem that I should address before it becomes more serious, or am I just worrying unnecessarily? I know my little guy can be overly sensitive – his feelings get hurt easily and depending on his energy level, even the smallest slight can appear to be a tragedy in his eyes. On one hand, he’s two. Some of his reaction is simply his age. On the other hand, I don’t want to overly coddle him and continue to see these sorts of reactions when he’s 4, 8, 10, etc. Ug, this feels like one of those challenging parenting moments when I’m going to have to pick a path and pray that it was the right one, and never really knowing if my decision was the best one, or if things would have been better if I reacted differently…