fears – Brave Stories for Kids

My daughter turned 3 years old this past summer. We had virtual “parties” with her paternal relatives and in-person celebrations with her maternal bubble during the pandemic. We sang Happy Birthday and blew out candles many times. She loved it and continues to play “birthday” many months later. Two weeks after her birthday, we were invited to a socially distant outdoor gathering for my friend’s child’s birthday. I thought this would be a good opportunity for my daughter to experience a social gathering with no pressure to play with other kids or do anything at all other than stay by my side to maintain distance from other people. And that is how I should have left it. But…

…I decided to take the opportunity to practice giving something to another child (present) and saying a socially expected phrase “happy birthday, [Friend]”. I did not think she would do these things at the party, but we used the lead up to the party to practice these acts during play in our home. I wrote a story and even conducted a small exposure ladder which included visiting the front yard of the friend’s house the day before the party and stopping to have ice-cream on the sidewalk to increase familiarity with the house (without seeing any people) and provide a positive association with the location (ice cream!). I suspected that the lure of a special treat on the day of the party would be a strong motivator for her to try to speak.

At that time, my daughter only spoke freely to her special bubble of people: parents, maternal grandparents, and little cousin. She spoke with restrictions to a handful of other relatives. She did not choose to speak to anyone else. She would, on occasion, say short statements with my prompting like “hello” and “how are you?” to neighbours that we pass on the sidewalk with the promise of a chocolate chip treat.

If this friend had not had a birthday party, I would not have sought out this opportunity. Even at the time, I felt this was too soon to push social speaking or interacting with another child that we saw infrequently. However, I tried to channel our psychologist, and I think she would have encouraged me to take advantage of the opportunity (especially since I had time to write a story and do a small exposure ladder). When we arrived at the party, my daughter held the present and I encouraged her to pass it to the birthday child. She did so but was clearly nervous. I prompted her to say, “happy birthday” which she was able to blurt out and then we immediately picked a treat from the table. For the rest of the event, my daughter stood beside my chair and watched the proceedings unfold (a bunch of adults sitting at a distance chatting about work and life). At some point I realized she was a bit more frozen than I expected and when I touched her arm, I realized she was slightly shaking. I knew this was too much and reminded her that we were going to see her cousin afterwards and we would leave soon. After a couple of minutes, I told her we were leaving and suddenly she blurted, “I want another cookie!”. The fact that she was able to speak when she was clearly distraught was surprising. Cookies are a powerful motivator, apparently.

At the time, I felt like this event had been a huge success. My daughter completed the socially appropriate act of speaking and giving a birthday gift and was thrilled to have a treat as her reward. I praised her after the event, and she had a big smile on her face. But, deep in my gut, I did not feel good about the experience; something did not sit right. I felt that I had coerced my daughter into playing the role of a puppet. She knew that by performing, she would get treats and praise from Mommy. She may have even felt that my love for her hinged on performing this incredibly difficult and fearful task. How horrible. My love for her is unconditional, but what I know does not matter; what matters is how she interprets my actions.

After much reflection, I realize that this birthday party was me pushing my daughter to do something that she did not want to do and did not need to do. Why did I think this was a good opportunity? Why did I think this was the right thing to do? I have a child who is clearly behaving atypically (not talking to others), and sometimes I feel like I am on the edge of the normal circle looking in and I feel pressure to be making active strides to get into the circle all the time. It was my own feelings of doubt about what I was doing with my daughter, my own feelings of wanting to fit in with the group, my own motivation of making my family appear normal to others, my own interpretation of what my psychologist might have recommended that pushed me to push my daughter. And I regret it.

What makes this situation different from all the other brave stories, exposure ladders, and fear-based activities that we have worked on over the past year? The other stories and ladders and actions were generally motivated by a (fearful) reality that we had to face: COVID-19, I had a doctor’s appointment for a mole removal on my face, our friend’s struggle with a special needs “explosive child” and a toddler, we were trapped in our condo’s elevator which created a phobia, etc. When I reflect on how I have encouraged bravery, it is to face things that we must face even when we are scared. It is about explaining the unknown and making it known. It always felt like we were facing things together and coming away stronger than before. It was never about exposing my daughter to fearful experiences to alleviate my own concerns of being atypical, until this birthday.

Of course, I want my daughter to be able to have good mental health and strategies to cope with feelings of anxiety. I hope that one day social situations and speaking will cause lower levels of anxiety, altogether, but pushing too much too soon will not get us there. My goals for my daughter speaking and engaging in social behaviours are long-term. They do not fit with the traditional age-requirements of our society where all preschools and classes are drop-off by 3 years old. I need to get creative. I need to find or make my own solutions that fit our life. It will be my advocacy and ingenuity that will create the environment my daughter needs to thrive such that we reach those long-term goals without sacrificing our relationship.

In my next post, I will discuss scripts I wrote for my sister to help her toddler make transitions.

Halloween 2020, my daughter is a little over three years old and we are still in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is nearing the end of November as I write this, and we have been facing an unprecedented bedtime and nighttime challenge everyday since October 31. My daughter has expressed being scared on an almost nightly basis which has interfered with our bedtime routine and has included multiple night wakings. In this post, I discuss the factors contributing to these events, the strategies I have employed and how I plan to continue.

My daughter’s sleep state prior to Halloween 2020: ever since we sleep trained our daughter at 7 months using a supported crying method, she has never woken up during the night (apart from her last night feeding which stopped around 9 months). I mean really. I can count on one hand the number of times she has woken during the night: zero. Additionally, she is an excellent napper and still naps 1.5-2 hours a day. She loves her sleep. It is clear to me that she uses her time in her dark, rain-noise-filled room to reset and decompress from all the anxiety-inducing events of the day. She often sings and chats while going to sleep and upon waking. Even when she wakes, she does not come out of her room but waits until I come to get her. I have always been very respectful of her sleep schedule adjusting all factors of our life to accommodate everyone’s sleep – i.e. no medical appointments, no visiting or driving or staying out past naptimes or bedtimes. I think this has contributed to her excellent sleep.

Vancouver is unique in Canada (and probably most places) in that it is traditional to set off personal fireworks on Halloween night. I had a very strong childhood fear of fireworks and Halloween. They were intertwined in a very scary way. Halloween has a reputation for teenagers and young adults to behave stupidly. And by stupidly, I mean drink an excessive amount of alcohol and use explosives (fireworks). Some of the stupid teenager behaviour on Halloween includes tying fireworks to dog’s tails, throwing fireworks out the window of moving cars at random pedestrians, pushing fireworks through mail slots of front doors, and blowing off their own fingers. This, combined with people dressed in costumes that included masks (of which I already had a deep-seated fear), made Halloween a nightmare for me as a child. And frankly, I still hate it. But, upon my psychologist’s encouraging, last year (2019) I took my daughter (then 2 years old) trick-or-treating in our exceptionally safe and kid-friendly neighbourhood.

Fast forward to this year, and due to the pandemic, we did not go out trick-or-treating. But the pandemic did not stop the fireworks (and subsequent three-fold increase in calls to firefighters that night). We were able to see a few fireworks in the sky from inside our condo. I tried to point them out to my daughter, but I was never quite sure if she saw them or just heard them. That night, after our usual 5-minute bedtime routine, my daughter said she was scared for the first time. I asked what she feared, and she said fireworks. I told her they would be over soon (lies), and they were a loud noise. Fireworks are outside and will not come inside. I tried to leave but she started sobbing and I could hear the real fear in her cries. I held her as she cried and pondered what to do. I decided I would sing extra songs. I sang for a while and hoped the fireworks would die down. Eventually, I told her I had to use the bathroom and would come back again afterwards. I left and she started sobbing. I did a couple of quick jobs to get myself more comfortable for what was looking like a long night. I held her for another 45 minutes singing continuously. She finally became so exhausted that she wiggled out of my arms and I tucked her in, and she fell asleep. She woke up again in the night and started crying because she was scared. Repeat my singing and eventually I got her back to sleep.

On subsequent nights, her behaviour included saying:

“I’m feeling scared” on repeat.
“Fireworks scare me”
“When am I going to die?”
“When will you die?”
“When will Daddy die”
“I’m feeling scared of dying”
“Are Gammie and Grandpa okay?”
“Keep the door open”
“Shut the door, the light is bothering my eyes”
“I’m cold”
“Don’t put that blanket on me”
“I need to pee”
“I need a drink”
“I need cream on my chin”
“I need a blanket under the door [to block the light]”
“I need the blanket away from the door [to see the light]”
“Is it time to wake up?”

She also started new behaviours during bedtime, naptime and in the middle of the night:

Opening her door
Shutting her door
Slithering down the hallway
Running around her room
Adjusting the blanket under her door (that had been used up until this point to block the light coming into her room)

The most prevalent fear that she raised was about death and dying. Rewind to August. I found a bird that had died on our balcony and instead of disposing of it before she woke from her nap as per my original plan, I decided to show her the dead bird. I had just read about how we over-protect children from natural occurrences of death and that I should use the opportunity to explore the beauty of the bird, try to look up what type of bird it is and provide the opportunity to experience a “removed” death. After the bird, we also read the book Lifetimes: A Beautiful Way to Explain Life and Death to Children by Bryan Mellonie. At that time, she had asked about three times when Mommy, Daddy, [herself], Gammie and Grandpa would die. I used the Lifetimes wording and descriptions and kept it pretty vague but did assure her that she would live a long life (since even if she doesn’t, she wouldn’t know because she’d be dead, so no point in not providing that reassurance is my thought).

Although I had a lot of childhood fears, I never had an explicit fear of death. I feared being murdered or bad guys murdering/attacking my family, but it was the attack that I feared, not the death outcome. I feared floods and fires (and I guess the aftermath of potentially not escaping and dying), but I never thought of death in an isolated situation as something fearful so when my daughter expressed that fear almost exclusively, I did not know what to say! Most articles that describe children’s bedtime fears mention the dark or monsters; death doesn’t get a mention in most discussions of toddler/preschooler fears. Even adults fear death. It is such an existential fear and difficult to discuss without possibly making the fear worse. She does not know what death really is, so it is unclear what she actually fears. The problem I found is that if I ask her what she fears, she says, “you [Mommy] tell me”. But I do not want to put additional thoughts or ideas into her mind. For example, if I talk about death as something like sleeping peacefully, then she may become scared that she will die when she sleeps and never wake up! I have discovered that it is difficult to discuss death with a 3-year-old without making the fear worse or presenting new fearful concepts.

Back in the present, I decided that I was not going to do any kind of ignoring strategies for her night wakings as I think these methods do not address the root problem and imply that being scared is a bad behaviour to be extinguished. I also think it would be terrible if someone I cared about left me alone with my fears when they could have offered comfort! So, I tried a bunch of strategies to help my daughter cope, including:

Focus on the next point of connection: “I’ll see you in the morning for breakfast. We will have yummy strawberries.” (From Dr. Gordon Neufeld’s pandemic talk.)
Distract her with pleasant thoughts, “You love going on big adventures. You will think about swinging, biking and going down the slide. Weeeeee. That’s so much fun.”
Sooth with singing.
Sooth and distract by singing songs that she could also sing
Sooth by holding/rocking/snuggling
Read the book The Invisible String by Patrice Karst and describe the connection of love between our hearts even when we are in different rooms.
Assure her that no one (that she mentioned) will die soon, and we will all live a long life. I know this goes against most recommendations about fears. You should not reassure something that is not true. But I have yet to read about recommendations for discussing death with a behaviourally inhibited 3-year-old! Although I would try to get into more nuance with an older child, I decided that at bedtime and in the middle of the night I am going to lie a little bit since it is highly unlikely that any of my daughter’s immediate family are going to die soon. When I read the Lifetimes book, there is discussion of short and long lifetimes so my daughter is not completely shielded from that idea, but I decided that 4 am is not the time to dwell on specifics!
I told her it was my job as her Special Big Person to hold on to her “Scared” (I got this idea from Jennifer Lapointe’s book Discipline Without Damage). I told her to give me her Scared and I would take it away. She gave it to me with her hand and then I ate it with a munching sound. My husband thought this would be even more scary but I came up with eating thing at 2 am. In hindsight, I might not do the eating thing, but in the end, my daughter seemed to really like this strategy and has since asked me to, “eat my Scared”.
Fill her head with kisses (Dr. Jennifer Lapointe).
Fill her Lovey with kisses and tell her Lovey to give those kisses to my daughter in the night.
My husband told her that her animal buddies were her protectors in the night (he read about that strategy online). Unfortunately, our daughter replied, “they [buddies] are not real.” So, that one kind of fizzled out!

I think all the above strategies helped somewhat, but the most consistently helpful methods in order were: singing (strategies 3 and 4), filling her and her Lovey with kisses (strategies 9 and 10) and “eating her Scared” (strategy 8). Since trying these strategies, my mom sent me this article about childhood fears of death from Psychology Today. There is no research evidence explicitly cited so it seems to be just an opinion piece, but it validated me assuring my daughter that we would all live long lives, despite not actually knowing if that is true [more info from this article]!

Although the fireworks seemed to trigger this period of nighttime fearfulness, there are a few other factors that have contributed to this perfect storm:

I have had new health issues over the past 3 months that have made me less active and just plain “different” from before.
Just prior to Halloween, I had started talking to my daughter about not wearing her diaper to sleep anymore and in the middle of November, I wrote a story to help transition her from diapers to undies. So, although I didn’t try to push the situation after the fears started, she ended up using the potty while she was having all these fearful night wakings. Eventually, some of the fearful night wakings transitioned to just potty wake-ups that still required tucking back in to bed.
Her aunt broke her ankle in the summer and that affected our usual schedule.
Her grandpa had a knee replacement surgery the day before Halloween and we were not able to see Gammie and Grandpa as he recovered.
Just after Halloween, new health orders came in restricting our bubble (which had included Gammie and Grandpa) to household members, which significantly altered our schedule.

Update (Dec 12, 2020)

We have now had two sequential nights without night wakings! It has been amazing. Once all the night wakings had transitioned to potty wake-ups without fear, I talked to my daughter about using the potty and going back to her bed and under her covers to stay warm and that she did not need to call me. I had little hope that this would work, but lo and behold, she did it! I have no idea if she is getting up at night and tucking herself back in or if she is sleeping all the way through. It is too early to say that this is our new nighttime but it sure is nice to have this reprieve.

An additional strategy I recently instigated was to do a double tuck-in at bedtime. I do my usual singing routine and first tuck-in, then promise to come back for a second tuck-in and last song after I do my bedtime jobs. This seems to work well in keeping her in her room and letting me get my own tasks done while giving her the security that I am not leaving her alone at night. There have been two instances in which she has fallen asleep prior to the second tuck-in, but other than that she is awake and happy to hear her last song and expresses no fears or concerns before falling asleep on her own.

Childhood fear of Death and Worry Time

One of the strategies mentioned in this article is a 10-minute Worry Time during the day where the child is encouraged to worry for 10 minutes and then stop. I have heard of this strategy as an adult and had a counsellor recommend it with the addition of an elastic band on my wrist that I would snap after the 10 minutes to “snap” out of the worry state. However, I did not find the technique particularly useful. It is incredibly hard to stop your mind from worrying once it starts. I tried it for a few days but found the worry (in my case it was also a very specific worry, not generalized) kept popping into my head and it was incredibly difficult (if not impossible) to stop the worry with this technique.

The technique reminds me of the concept of writing down your thoughts before bedtime, so your brain does not keep thinking about them. Both my dad and I have used this technique successfully for mundane thoughts that keep you awake, “I don’t want to forget milk on the grocery list.”, “I need to set up a meeting with Bob tomorrow”. I have noticed that if I take the time to get out of bed and write down the thought, my brain relaxes and stops thinking about it. However, I have not had the same success with worrying/anxious thoughts. Writing them down does not seem to stop them from making my brain “buzz”. Since I have only experienced using this technique as an adult, I am not sure how much easier/more difficult it would be for a 3-year-old to successfully offload worries during a Worry Time such that those worries would not come back again in the night. I feel like this technique has the potential to make the situation worse by creating more worry dwelling time; I am hesitant to start it without good evidence that it will be helpful and not hurtful. For me, the jury is still out on Worry Time.

Ok, I slipped this post in here because my life revolved around these night wakings for the past month, but I still plan to discuss some of the brave stories in my next post.