Feeling Drained? Fear Not!

When my son was three he became afraid of being "fired." This was long before The Donald. Not sure where he came up with the idea he could be "fired" for opening the front door without permission, "fired" for hitting his brother, or "fired" for refusing to brush his teeth. But truth be told, we let him think it as it seemed to be an effective tool he used to self regulate his behavior. The beauty of it was he came up with the concept and we never even had to act on it. He still has his childhood to this day and hasn't even missed a day of work!

Not too long ago a mom friend shared with me a story about her child being afraid of the bathtub. This sparked my memory of a reader who shared her concern about her child's fear of automatic toilets. I went back and looked at the post and realized I had left a comment chronicling how my own son had gotten over his fear of the toilet and the tub.

Feels like the right time to bring that story back into the daylight since the concern is bubbling up again.

I think it's safe to say when our children are scared we want so much for them to feel safe, and it's common for parents to feel lousy if our kid is afraid and we can't figure out what is going on . Some fears are based upon magical thinking, which is an ordinary occurrence in child development and isn't at all about poor parenting practices. Do parents ever experience guilt when our kids experience fear? You bet.

There will be times during parenthood, when we will be able to follow our child's thought patterns as if a trail of crumbs and other instances where trying to figure out why your child is suddenly melting down seems more complicated than coming up with a plan for world peace. And truth be told, you'd rather run to Camp David than face another scream filled second in Target.

Let's talk about angst baby...

When my son was about 18 months old he suddenly became afraid of taking a bath and of being anywhere near a toilet. Initially I thought he had developed a fear of the water, but it came to pass he was actually afraid of being sucked into the bathtub drain or flushed down the toilet. Which is a fairly common fear among the toddler and pre-school set.

I don't remember how I finally made the connection, but somehow I got the message. Now that I understood the issue, the question was "Now what do I do about it?"

So I grabbed a tape measure and my son and we went to the nearby grocery store. We headed to the produce department whereupon I measured my son's head. I then grabbed a cantaloupe and measured it. After determining it was approximately the same size as my son's head, we purchased said melon.

Once home, I filled our bathtub with the same amount of water used for my son's bath. I again measured the melon and my son's head. Then I placed the melon in the tub. My son sat on my lap, hit the lever and we both watched the water drain from the tub.

My son could see for himself, the melon wasn't going down the drain.

However, our work here was not yet complete. There was the flushing fear too.

After the bath water had drained from the tub, I picked up the melon and put it in the toilet. I asked my son to please flush the toilet. Again we watched as the melon failed to disappear. My son gleefully flushed the toilet again.

Again my son saw the melon would not go down the hole in the toilet. Together we talked about the melon being the same size as the biggest part of his body, his head, and if the melon couldn't get flushed or go down the drain, then neither could he.

Melon was there, fear wasn't. Done!

No more tears for fears here.

Got any scary stories of your own? Got any fear busters that work?