Afraid of the dark

[spmamma]

How old was your little one when he/she developed a fear of the dark?

My 2.5-year-old daughter has been having trouble sleeping lately and I think it's because she's suddenly discovered that she's afraid of the dark. It's hard to tell, though, because she's so young and sometimes still has trouble expressing herself.

About a week ago, we noticed that she was becoming clingier at night. She she doesn't want Daddy to leave her room at night. She freaks out when I can't be with her for naps because I need to put the baby down too (even though it's not really dark during nap time). She comes into our room in the middle of the night and freaks out big time if we try to put her back into bed.

A night light doesn't seem to help much. The only thing that does any good is to allow her to sleep on the floor of our room on her old crib mattress once she comes in during the night.

Any ideas on how to help her out? How long did this phase last with your kids?

We don't mind having her in with us, but we've also got the baby in bed with us too. He tends to wake up at night, which sometimes wakes her up too. Her sleep has been so interrupted lately that I think she's lapsing back into a cold she just got over.

[hakeber]

When ds did this, I got an empty spray bottle and made a label and wrote monster spray on it and drew a picture of the scary things he was afraid of (a big red cat, a shark, crabs, a monster, and a spider) in a red circle with a red line through them. Each night after stories, I "sprayed" the room in all the suspect locations, under the bed, around all the doors, in all the corners, in the closet, around the windows...I don't know why, but it worked. oh and it lasted about a year, now he just needs the light on outside his window.

[spmamma]

What an awesome idea! Thank you for sharing - I definitely need to get a spray bottle now.