I need some ideas.

[montmeag]

How do you deal with monsters? My 4 year old has talked about them and been somewhat scared of monsters for a while. We have been telling him that if you tickle the monsters they go away. That's worked for a while, but not this last week. He has been increasingly scared and sometimes terrified to be in his room by himself at night. He has been waking up several times during the night and will not go back to sleep on his own. He comes into our room and one of us has to go lie down with him until he's asleep or he just screams. I don't know what to do to get rid of the monsters. HELP!

[caulensmom]

Fill up a water bottle and write MONSTER DELETER or MONSTER CLEANER somthing like that. So when he gets scared he can spray in the direction the mosters are at...create a good story behind it or somthing.

[cjoy2day]

Yep, we had monster spray in my house growing up. I sprayed under beds & in closets before bed. Add a little febreze & let them freshen up a little :-)

[Kim Hansen]

Saying prayers nightly worked at my house for monsters and bad dreams.

[crystalclark87]

My mom always had us sing primary songs whenever we were scared. (I still do it to this day!) Prayers also for sure. I think the monster spray is a cute idea. I always calmed down with singing/humming the songs to myself though.

[montmeag]

We do say prayers but I might put a picture of Jesus right above his bed and tell him Jesus is watching over him.

[April]

We do say prayers but I might put a picture of Jesus right above his bed and tell him Jesus is watching over him. That's sweet. Hopefully this will start to work.

I'm not sure I agree with monster spray or the tickling idea. That only enforces the idea that monsters are real doesn't it?

Maybe you could just tell your 4 year old that anytime they are scared they can call you and you'll run in. This would be incredibly annoying for a while but it might help assure them that you are there if there is ever trouble. Although there is definitely the risk that this could become a habit, I really think it could help give some confidence and security. I personally would rather work on a bad habit in a week or two rather than have my child terrified to go to bed. I did this with my little boy a couple nights when he was scared and that's all it took for him. I over exaggerated the run in and check on him routine so he really felt like I took it serious.

[April]

If you go with my idea, I would make sure he knew that monsters weren't real but you would come in to check on him anyway.

[Shellie]

We told our kids that the only monsters were the nice Sesame Street monsters. That would probably only work if you started telling the kids that as soon as they started talking about scary monsters though.

[a_c_danica]

My 3 1/2 year old has become scared of the dark and the thing that we tell him is the only monsters at our house is Mom and Dad (we pretend to get them sometimes in a playful way) That seems to work with him, we also go in and check on what ever he says looks like a monster and we show him what it really is and make it into something funny, like "it's just a stuffed bear silly..." This works for us. But we have been doing it since the start. Plus we don't have any doors on the closet and his bed is on the floor so there aren't a lot of places for monsters to hide either.
The other thing is if he is having night mares you might want to see what in his schedule has changed lately. When I was about that old I had really bad nightmares and had to go to therapy so I would even go to sleep and they found out it was because I wasn't in preschool at the time and I had been PLUS I was watching the news so I stopped watching the news and I got back in school and the nightmares stopped... just a thought if there are nightmares too.

[montmeag]

We tried and tried from the beginning to tell him that monsters were not real but he has stood firm that there are monsters. That's when we came up with the tickling thing. Last night was a much better night though, not one whimper and he was even semi-awake when I left his room so there is some progress. Before he went to sleep I asked him what he would dream about and tried to "plant" some ideas, like trains, puppies, mom and dad, etc. That must have helped. That or it was a fluke. We'll see how tonight goes. Thanks for your suggestions, everyone.

[Jenny McDonald]

Hope everything goes well tonight!

[caulensmom]

YAhoo I hope he sleeps good too! :)

This subejct made me think of what my parents did when I was a kid. Since their bedroom was in the basement and my brothers and mine were upstairs, I remember it being a creepy walk for me to get out of bed and head all the way downstairs....alone....in the dark. I remember trying to go into my older brothers room to find some comfort but he just scared me about wearwolfs on the moon and ghost.....on top of the nightmare I had just had. So I think I had to self sooth myself since all my options were a no go! hahaha So funny!

[supermombritt]

We have monster spray at our house and it has worked wonders. I have a can of clean linen spray (glade or some other brand) and when I spray it, they can smell it. I spray it when they go to bed and they fall asleep. We have not had to use it for quite some time, but they smell the smell and it works. We of course said monsters were not real, but they did not believe that.