Monday, November 30, 2009

Toddler Fear

Eliza has been having a few challenges lately- one of which is fear. All of a sudden she seems to be scared of lots of things she didn't mind before. I want to say it started happening about a month ago. At night she sometimes wakes up crying from what seems to be a nightmare. She is usually talking or crying and not fully awake. She is talking about toys so I guess she is dreaming about playing. One night she woke up and was crying to go downstairs. The other night she woke up crying about her letter puzzles. She has an obsession with the letter A in general and woke up saying, "Where's the A?".


I took her on an errand to Lowe's and thought it would be fun to show her the Christmas decorations. Bad Idea! She started freaking out and screaming, "Go Home. "I tried to cheer her up by showing her a singing snowman. bad idea #2! I hauled A$$ out of the x-mas section and that helped.


She is also wondering about every sound she hears. "What's that?" One day she heard a leaf blower outside and told me the ghost was coming. She actually started freaking me out this time. Does she have the sixth sense?


One day we attempted to enjoy the nice weather. I lugged the double stroller out of the car and took a walk to the playground on the other side of the development. She saw/heard the bulldozer and immediately wanted to go home. She clung to me as hard as she could. We ended up sitting in a pavilion and watching the bulldozer.

Her most challenging fear is of cars. As soon as we turned her front facing she started getting scared of riding in cars. This make it very difficult to do anything outside of the house. She refuses to even leave the condo if she knows we are headed to the car.

She was watching Thomas one day and was very afraid after Thomas got stuck in the mud. She has been talking about it for weeks! The other day I had The Santa Clause 2 on and she started crying when she saw the toy soldiers.

I know it is just a phase but it is certainly a challenge. I never seem know what it going to scare her. Have you had to deal with any toddler fears?

9 comments:

Tracy said...

Oh yeah this stage is fun. Madison is afraid of the shadow that the night light in the bathroom casts. She says it looks like Baby Jack Jack from Incredibles. This morning she had to get a flu shot. She cried the whole time we were on the waiting line. I had to pin her legs to me and grab her arms. The nurse couldn't get her sleeve up so we pulled her shirt down. As soon as the shot started she relaxed and exlaimed "It doens't even hurt!". I could go on and on 'cause there always seems to be a new fear from her. Drama!

Tracy said...

Oh I forgot to mention the blood curdling screams that had everyone on the room stairing at her. When the shot was over people actually clapped!

Future Mom (Heather) said...

I guess all kids are different. My friend's kids (2 and 3) are crazy maniacs and not afraid of anything. If they see something scary on tv like violence or whatever they will say "woah that guy died" and think it's the greatest thing ever. I am probably scared of more things than they are. I am kind of sad that E is scared of Xmas decorations, they are supposed to be happy things but then again a lot of kids are afraid of Santa or those big characters at Disney world. Compared to E's size a lot of those things are huge and it probably freaks her out. As far as the bulldozer I think it's better to be cautious around dangerous stuff like that, you would rather her want to stay away than run right up to it. She seems to be ok watching from a distance. As for the car I wonder if she gets carsick maybe? I used to when I was little and wasn't exactly thrilled about taking long car trips either. Hope everything gets better :) See you soon!

Lori said...

Blake has gone through that a bit... he seems to work it out on his own. The older he gets the more secure he seems to be getting dealing with things. I hope she outgrows it quickly for you

Christy said...

To this day, my daughter is still terrified of anyone in a costume and all puppets. She did okay with Halloween this year, but I think that was because I talked it up for a month beforehand. Anyways, it is bad. Finger puppets at story time freaked her out. Chuck E Cheese is horrifying. And Santa Claus is the equivalent of a serial killer. Izzy is afraid of loud noises and all stranglers - especially men.

Christy said...

strangers - not "stranglers." I think we should all be afraid of stranglers!

Heather said...

We're going through this too. Especially asking about every sound she hears. We had an incident with a Jack in the Box the other day that was quite comical - I'm concerned she might be scarred for life :)

Marcy said...

I think a lot of the stuff that's supposed to be fun for kids is often so huge and overwhelming and IN YOUR FACE and I often wonder how more kids aren't scared to death of them. For example: clowns. They're supposed to be all fun and games, yet somehow extremely creepy.

It sounds like her imagination is maybe taking off and that's where some of these fears are developing? I have no idea what to say as we haven't hit this yet, but maybe try to be extra careful of the things she might be hearing/seeing (jokes people say, TV shows, etc). Kids take things SERIOUSLY and will make huge deals out of comments adults think are nothing. We were at a friend's pool party over the summer and my friend's 2yr old freaked out b/c my husband made a joke about the blown-up dolphin pool toy being a "shark."

Anonymous said...

YES!! Kaelin hates loud noises: vacuum, garbage disposal, etc....she says, "MOmmy are you going to turn loud on?" She also wakes from her sleep whimpering and sometimes talking about random things in her sleep...like the other night about her aunt's phone. come to find out there was some feature that freaked her out about her aunt's phone! Who knew?