I scared mommy!

[soontobemommyof3]

A few days ago my almost 2 yrs old daughter was playing outside and had a run in with a bee. She must have really made it mad because I heard her scream and when I looked she was running her hands through her hair and screaming. I ran over and grabbed her we ran across the yard and the dang thing chased us. Then it got in my hair. Finally it left us alone.

She is terrified now though. She will bring it up out of no where and say "mommy bumble bee scarry" "I scared mommy" and then if she thinks about it too much she will start crying hysterically. Today I gave her a bath and there was something black floating in the water and she freaked, she thought it was a bee. Then when there was a fly she was screaming and crying. I explained to her that bees are yellow and black and flies are just black and flies can't hurt. Which helped with that. But she still will start crying out of no where and say "Bumble bee I so scared." To top it off she has flowers and bumble bees painted in her bedroom.. She hasn't noticed yet and I hope she never does.

So how can I ease her fears? I feel so bad for her.

[hildare]

i LOVE honeybees!!! It's my mission to spread the love, so I'd suggest a campaign of reintroduction. An incident like this is a good jumping off point to doing your baby's first research project, too!
If it were me (take it fwiw), I'd talk to her about what bees do. Can't remember how old you dd is but if she's old enough for honey, I'd start with tasting some. Otherwise, you can eat apples and talk about how bees help make apples with pollen! Tell her you're going to the library to get books- there are lots of fantastic little kid books on bees.. look for them together and talk about bees and how important they are. Look at pictures or videos if you find some, there are plenty.
Is there anything blooming outside that may attract bees? (I know with fall coming in some areas it's slim picking) but if she gets a little more comfortable through book exposure, you could go on a "bee hunt" and sneak up to the flowers just to watch.
In my area, there's a college town nearby, and a natural history type museum, too, so you could see if there's anything like that to take her and show her dead ones... also the entomology nerds stage a bug zoo and things like that, which would be neat events for her.
buzzzzzzz! And, I would have done the same thing you did- you scared her and she scared you! I hope she warms up to bees again, though

[elizaMM]

aw! hildare's got the right idea. I wonder if it would be helpful to talk about why you were scared too. maybe you have but it might take the mysterious scariness away to talk about how sometimes bees sting (or "bite"?) but usually they don't, only if they are scared, and sometimes we get scared because we don't like to get hurt and we forget to stay calm and this is what we'll do in the future if it happens again but it probably won't...
(the behavior you describe sounds like Yellow Jackets around here...)