Xander Week 95 - Scary Halloween…
October 31, 2008
In our town there are many, many opportunities for Halloween trick-or-treating, parties, etc. It all starts the Friday night before Halloween, this year, it was the week before. The local business host trick-or-treating in their shops. There is music and activities on the town common, candy in the stores, and often hot cider and cookies around for hungry parents. We brought Xander with some friends last year, and although he was too young to really appreciate the event, he had fun people watching, and we enjoyed the near mob scene. This year, we took Xander again, thinking that even though he is still small, he would probably enjoy seeing the other kids, and all the people.
Apparently we were wrong… Since then, Xander has been afraid that pumpkins, goblins or “bad guys” are going to get him. Pretty much every night this week we’ve had to make some sort of accomodation for “bad guy protection”. Most often, he needs socks and his feet tucked in super tight so that the “bad guys” won’t get his feet. One night he actually managed to get out of bed and locate his foam sword (part of his pirate costume) before we got upstairs to comfort him. That night he was convinced that the goblins were going to get him. It was sad, but incredibly cute that he had managed to arm himself to ward off the goblins - as you would expect, he fell asleep holding the sword that night.
I know this is just a phase, and eventually he’ll get through it. We’ve been careful to validate his fears (yes, goblins can be scary, but look - there aren’t any in here, and we can check under the bed, in the closet, etc.) and try to reassure him that he’s safe, ok, and nothing is going to hurt him, etc. We’ve tried special socks, night lights, explaining that his stuffed animal (the only one he’s ever shown any interest in - curious george) protects him from “bad guys”. I’ve considered resorting to special “monster spray” (water with food coloring in a spray botttle), but he loves to spray those so much, our entire house would be soaked in a matter of minutes… So, we’re trying to ride it out, and I’m hoping that when Halloween is over, perhaps the fears will slowly start to fade as well.
Since Halloween has turned into such a scary experience, we’ve decided not to take Xander trick-or-treating this year. He’s still got plenty of candy from last weekend, and he doesn’t enjoy wearing his costume all that much, and the last thing we need is to walk up to an enthuastiac Halloween house (which I think is great, just not so great for my scared kid…) and give Xander nightmares for another few weeks. Instead, we’ll all stay home and hand out candy this year, and hopefully next year our little man will have more excitement for this holiday…
