So last night I was tucking Emily in and she revealed to me how afraid she is all night long because of the monster under the bed. She told me she is afraid to go to the bathroom at night (her room comes with a bathroom so it’s very close), and when she really has to go she ends up running from the bathroom and leaping onto her bed so the monster won’t grab her feet. She also has told me that sometimes things in her room are in different places in the morning and she assumes the monster moved them.
I was at once very concerned but also very excited because I was being given the opportunity to help her move past her fear, just like I write about in my blog. Super psychic mom to the rescue! 🙂
First of all I told her there is no monster under her bed and that if there was I’d be able to see it. This is true actually. She told me to check and I did and there was no monster (i.e. negative entity or energy). She said the monster doesn’t come out until I leave. Okay, that’s logical. If I were a monster I would avoid me too.
I can’t tell my daughter that she is imagining this, and I can’t tell her that there is no such thing as monsters, because that wouldn’t be quite true. Never dismiss your child’s fear by telling them they are imagining something. It may well be that they are imagining it, but that is not always the case. Sometimes there really is something in their room for them to be afraid of, and if you dismiss their claims you are leaving them to deal with something powerful without the slightest clue how to handle it. Just because you can’t see or feel something doesn’t mean it’s not there. Children are generally far more open to paranormal activity than adults.
One of the reasons I could not tell my daughter she was imagining things is because, totally unknown to her, she has reported incidents occurring in her room at night that jive with what I “dream” is happening in her room on the same night. There have been too many of these coincidences for me to dismiss.
Since I could not convince my daughter that she was safe in her room at night, I decided to give her some tools to handle the situation, which is what I wished my mom had done for me. It may have saved me from peeing in my bed because I was too afraid to leave it. So first I told Emily how to change her emotional state before she goes to bed. Reading, talking on the phone with her very amusing Grammy, or just imagining she is going to Disneyland in the morning. That gave her a big smile on her face when I suggested it, but she said that feeling wouldn’t help her at 1 in the morning.
So I asked her if she had ever actually seen the monster under the bed, to which she replied “no.” Then I asked her if the monster under the bed had actually harmed her in some way. She thought about it and said “no.” So I intimated that maybe the monster wasn’t there and she only thought he was there. She said, “Then how come things in my room are in different places in the morning? It has to be the monster moving things.” So I said, “Well, is he putting them away? Maybe he’s trying to help you keep your room clean.” She said that he was not cleaning, just moving things. Darnit, because we could really use a cleaning monster in that room! 😉
I wanted her to be able to get out of her bed at night and go to the bathroom if she needed to without being afraid. So I did what any caring, compassionate mommy would do … I taught her the Patronus Charm. I picked up one of her fairy wands and waved it in the air while shouting, “Expecto Patronum!” She was excited. I was too! I told her that the Patronus Charm would create a strong, ethereal light that would push the bad energy far far away. Now, this isn’t as silly as some of you might be imagining. Believing in the charm is half the power. I handed her the wand and taught her the strange magical incantation. She waved the wand, said “Expecto Patronum!” with all her might and whammo, a full grown stag came flying out of her wand! Okay, okay, it wasn’t a stag. It was just wishful thinking, but you should have seen her power and confidence wielding that wand! She started laughing with glee. “Oh Mommy,” she said, “I like doing magic!” Then she asked, “Does this really work?” I replied, “How do you feel now?” She said, “I feel powerful!” I said, “Then yeah, it worked!”
So then we practiced, as any good wizard should. After I was sure she had the proper wand movement down pat, I asked her to walk to her bathroom carrying her wand. As soon as she got to the dark bathroom she began to cringe and whine. Hmm. I decided a systematic desensitization might work. So I had her practice walking from her bathroom back to her bed without trying to leap over the monster grabby hands. Her first try was slow and she was obviously scared. I knew that feeling well. But I had her practice it about a dozen times, and she finally got so bored of the task that she hustled to her bed with only annoyance instead of fear. That’s what I was hoping would happen. Anger trumps fear.
Truth be told though, when I stood in her bathroom doorway with my back to the darkness I too felt something creepy. I “checked” the bathroom with my own senses and there was definitely something not right in there (besides all the toys in the bathtub and the towels on the floor). I did a quick banishment of anything in that bathroom that didn’t belong there, but I’m going to have to do a little more work in there to see what that was and then clear it.
So now she’s back in bed and she’s got her wand on her nightstand, and by this time about 30 minutes has passed, and I’ve got some other things to do, so I’m anxious to get going. Then she says, “What do I do if something really bad comes into my room through the window and tries to take me out?” I told her to call on her personal angel, Claire, and to also call upon Archangel Michael and Metatron to help her. She wanted to know who was the most powerful, so I told her to call on Michael but that any of the three could do the job nicely. She practiced saying their names and finally she was ready to go to sleep.
This morning I asked her how she slept and if anything untoward happened last night. Here is her tale: “Well after you closed the door I got really afraid. So I called on Michael and I felt much better. Then I just started talking to myself, telling myself silly things and that made me laugh. So then I felt better and went to sleep.” I asked her if she had any encounters with the monster under the bed or if she had to go to the bathroom. She said, “I couldn’t remember that magic spell you told me. What was it again? Asbestos Petroleum?”
“Uh, no, honey. That would make your ceiling sticky,” I replied.
“Oh,” she said. Then she lit up, “Hey that sounds like fun! Can I make my ceiling sticky?”
“Uh, I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Drat,” she said as she ran off to play.
Mischief managed. For now…
