UGH! I can't stress enough how stressful it has been with my son lately about the dark. Even them all the light are on in the house, it's still scary and dark. We live in a two level house. The bedrooms are upstairs and the bathroom. When it's night time I have all the lights on upstairs so Tanner wont be afraid to go up there alone. Whenever I tell him to go potty or get his jammies on, or even when he wants a toy from his room, he says "can you go with me, it's too dark". It's like pulling teeth!!! UGH! He refuses. Is this normal, and what the heck can I do to get him over it. I feel like he shouldn't even have his own room because he barely uses it besides sleeping in it. :-? :-? :-?
be thankful he sleeps in his bed, mine youngest still comes in mine once in a while, and yes, I think its normal, I think he is wanting extra mommy time, you have spent all day with the other kids in your preschool and him asking you to help him is a way to get you to be alone with just him (or dad). Eva went through this stage for a while, she needed help with everything even though I knew she could do it by herself. I gave in and the stage didn't last very long. Jen, I know this isn't the answer you want to hear, but really I think you give your son a little extra help, for a while then start doing something in your room while he brushes his teeth after a while, then tell him to go up staris and get started while you have to do something in the kitchen and you will be up in a minute, then while alternating doing this and helping, back off a little more and praise him for getting a task done with out you, then when its jammie time and teeth brushing time, you eventualy have something to do and cant help, but you let him know how brave he is and what a big boy he is and he'll get back to his old self.
AH! You're right, it's not what I wanted to hear. But thank you for being honest. I don't have a problem helping him necc., it's that he thinks it's still too dark even though it's not. That's his reasoning. He gets freaked out and throws a fit about it. It all started when he said he had a bad dream. Maybe he's afraid of being up there alone? Usually if I'm in my bedroom he will play during the day in his room or even play in his room if I'm downstairs. But if it's at night, forget it. There is something about the dark and the fact that the bedroom is up stairs. I don't know. I will try what you suggested. Wean him out of it I guess you could say. Thanks.
Jen, this is normal.Aball has excellent advice.It won't be long your handsome little man will be married with a family of his own. You will be missing theese days.let him be yours as long as he will.
And Jen, Just to make you feel better, all mine needed all this except malcolm, he has always been one to go to bed and fall asleep really well, (except when he was almost one he would throw up every day when I put him to bed!) I think they all took longer than usual to potty train, the twins had tiny stomachs and alergies to thier formula and thru up every single day as babies, (premies) both twins had thier share of medicine, moniters and every thing else, then donald had leukemia at age 2 1/2 and I had to crush all that medicine! And eva, she had a heart problem and needed med too, I thought I was never going to get through all of that! But I did! (I was so sick of despensing medicine! now all the kids are done with it, and now I need it for my diabetes!--Ugg!). Ok, I am whining and I know there are others that have it worse than I did. But my point is what your going through is not too much!
I agree that he may be needig more mommy time or maybe just not feeling confident in his ability to do things himself.. Sami has stages where she will do everything perfectly on her own and then make a mistake and think she can't do it anymore. Then I just have to be there with her more till she sees she can do it well again. Years of being a nanny and babysitter taught me that one must always have a can of "Monster Spray" handy at night. (Compressed Air or mild air freshener with a cool monster spray label) this is for the kids that see the shapes of furnature and insist it's a monster or a "something" in their rooms. Active imaginations and make the ordinary scary. I show them with a light on and off what it is they are looking at it and tell them they are pretending there's a monster so your monster speay works like bug spray for killing imaginary scary things. Also I told Sami that God is always with us and He's bigger and stronger than any scary thing there is - all she has to do is ask Him to help her. She Took it to heart and it worked better than anything else I've tried when she gets scared.
Jeanne is like that, Jen. Look at it from his point of view, you know? Maybe to him it is indeed too dark. I do what Aball said, while Jeanne brushes I'll get a nightgown on, or I'll hang her clothes up. Do you think another kid told him something? Did this just start?
oh also my grandmother gives the kids their own flashlights so they can turn them on if they can't see or if they get scared or need to get up to go to the bathroom. I hate it cause they play with them but some of my cousins handle it resopnsibly.. depends on the kid I guess.
My 4yo is like that but worse. He doesn't like to even go to his room by himself on most days and especially at night. His sister is right next door so I can usually get him to go to sleep in his room but he must have a lamp on at all times. He has been scared to be alone for atleast a year or more. The house we're in now is fairly big so I can see how he feels alone and frightened when he's down in his room. But, he is also still very clingy as well. He, too, gets up in the night to come climb in bed with us about 70% of the time. I fought it for a little while but I figure he's bound to outgrow this before too long. He won't be wanting to snuggle with mommy in a few years I bet!
My just turned 7 year old is like that. But my 4 year isn't bothered at all by the dark. They share a room even. Just a phase and we are trying to just go with the flow - walk with him in his room, make sure he is tucked in, go with him to brush his teeth, ect. Sometimes he is scared of noises during the day, but not all the time. This too will pass before we know it! They are all growing up to fast!
Tanner doesn't have a problem going to sleep. That's the thing. He will go to sleep without a problem. He has his nightlight, his music, and he knows mom is right across the hall watching her show on tv while crashing on the bed in her room. He will also go upstairs during the day by himself without a problem, it's just at night. The other night we asked him to go upstairs and get his jammies and it turned into a feud between the hubby and him. All the lights were on, and it's not a big house so it's really light when they are all on. In the dark without lights, I wouldn't be stumped, but ALL the lights are on for him. I know it's just something he has to get through. His imagination also gets the best of him at times. He has pretend imaginary friends, a pretend mouse that visits his room, and a man in the window (that ones a little creepy). It all started after he had a dream about a bad robot. And guess what he wants to be for trick or treat?!? A darn robot! Go figure, the very thing that he was afraid of he wants to be for T or T. That's tackling his fear head on I guess. He got over the initial dream pretty quick after consoling him a few days about it and was back to normal about going to bed and such, except for this situation. He always was a little freaked out about our upstairs (it's not even that creepy, it's just an old house), but it has esculated into this since then.
Old houses make plenty of funky noises. We used to live in a 300-plus year old farm house, and if you just sat very quietly you could hear creaks, mice, whatever. Reading this thread reminded me of all that. This house was built in the 30's, so all we hear now is traffic out front. Jen- is it possible for someone to be looking in?? We have a guy here who walks around all day outside, all day long. He just showed up one day, and I thought he was dumped off. He's slow mentally, and I thought someone who was supposed to be his caregiver had just dumped him. He actually lives down the street from us. He never bothers anyone and he doesn't go near houses. He's actually very polite. Maybe you have such a man in your town but you're so busy in the day you never notice him?
I thought that, but our bedrooms are all upstairs on the second level. Someone would have to pitch a ladder right in front of our big living room window to see in and hope and pray they don't fall off the steep roof. Plus, Troy is up til midnight so he would see someone right in front if there was. Our neighbor to the right of us is a little creepy seeming at times, but I think it's just because he lives alone (his mom died this year and took care of her for 7 years) and keeps to himself a lot. Poor guy...when he does see us he talks a lot and you can tell he misses someone to talk to all the time. He's very nice though. I was also thinking too...our stairs don't go straight up. There is a landing in half way up and sometimes even with the light on the landing looks dark from the bottom of the stairs. I don't think this is the main problem, but I was thinking of putting a flashlight downstairs and have him take it with him when he has to go upstairs for something alone. Maybe it will help him. I think our house was built in the 40's or 30's. Maybe even 20's? I'm unsure exactly, but it's older. Our garage/shed was part of the original barn when our neighborhood was a farm. It's got some history.
Have you considered the spiritual? My brother once had a problem like that. No matter what we tried, we couldn't get him to go downstairs by himself. We even had a dog to send with him but he just wouldn't go alone. We couldn't figure it out and knew we had to me missing something but didn't know what. Thankfully it was about that time that the Christian school we were attending was having problems with misbehaving kids and such the like so they went from room to room praying trying to find out what might be the problem. The whole school/church was clean except the attic. Up there they found something that was very spiritually disturbing. I don't know what, but I know it was an ordinary object of some sort. Anyway, they removed it and prayed over the room again and the level of misbehavior dropped. After hearing about that, we decided to try it in our house. As a family we prayed over every room and every room was clean except for my brother and my room in our basement. There we found a little toy glow-in-the-dark skeleton we bought at a museum. Something about it wasn't right so my dad removed it and we prayed over the room. After that, my brother wasn't so scared. He was still scared, but not as much. I definitely think that the skeleton had something to do with him being afraid but I guess we can't prove anything. I've personally heard lots of stories like that and if we believe there is a God, then we have to believe in Satan and demons. Another story that has come to my mind sends chills down my spine and is true and came from a reliable source. What happened was, a homeshcool family I grew up with had an older son who started hanging out with the wrong crowd. (Gangs, etc...) One day he came home with a box of stuff a friend of his wanted him to store for some reason. At that time this family lived in a house with a day basement and the entrance to the crawlspace under the kitchen was in this son's bedroom's closet. The son put the box and stuff in the crawl space so it would be out of the way. After a while he started having dreams about something coming out of his closet but he brushed them of as just dreams. Then after a while the thing in the closet would try to pull him into the closet in his dreams but he would wake up before it got him. But one time he didn't wake up until the thing had a hold of his ankle and started dragging him from his bed and into the closet. When he woke up, he was out of his bed with his ankle partway in the closet. After that happened, his parents removed the stuff (I don't know what, I was too young I think) but there were still "side effects." One of those was their youngest child was very timid and afraid of almost everything for a long time. Now I don't claim to be an expert, but I do know what I've been told by those who experienced such things first hand. I believe demons are real and that they need to be considered and dealt with. Maybe you and your husband should look into that sort of thing? It might explain the man in the window and the mouse as well as the darkness. Children might be more sensitive when in comes to that sort of thing and your son could be picking up on something evil you should remove from your house.
Josh!! What a far out story!! You're right, though. I've heard of that kind of thing. Jen just needs to go upstairs with her little boy and the whole thing will stop. He's afraid to go by himself- he is only three or four! Jen is bushed at the end of the day and doesn't feel like traipsing up the steps with him, understandably so. You'll be like that, too, when all those Josh JR's start coming.
oh this is a definite possibility. We always pray over all the rooms in our houses. I used to work in a nursing home and we even had ministers come and pray over all the rooms there once a month because of all the reports of ghosts, demons, etc. Reports always dropped drastically for the couple of weeks after praying over the rooms.
Oh, I know it's real. I'm not discounting what Josh said. I just think it's not the issue here. I think the real issue is Jen's little boy still needs her to go with him upstairs. Think of how long and dark the stairs must look from his little perspective. At the same time, I can understand her wanting him to get used to going without her.
Becky is right, this isn't a demon thing. Speaking of, we just rented the movie Amityville Horror last night (the new version) and I must say, it creeped me out. Josh, thank you for your kind remarks and concern, but when you have a 3 year old someday, you will understand the 3 year old mind a little better. All kids go through a stage somewhat like this, and to be honest, the dark creeps me out too and I'm not far from 30. If we heard weird sounds and wierd things were happening and there were clues pointing to that, then I'd be more concerned, but this is just a matter of my boy not wanting to be alone upstairs at night. I have a few friends whose children are going through the same thing come to find out. One even lives in a ranch style house. It's the age, and his mind is wild sometimes. Tanner is much like me. I'm 28 years old, and I had to have my husband walk me upstairs after we watched the movie last night (stop laughing). I'm a baby, and I guess my boy takes after me. It runs in the family I guess.
