Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Tuesday's Tribute - zzzzzzzzz I need sleep
My son has decided a few things over the last two weeks. These include:
~ The dark is a very scary, unpredictable thing.
~ Fire is terrifying and happens to houses when people are sleeping.
~ Sleeping alone is the scariest thing anyone could ever ask you to do.
~ If someone agrees to lay down with you, cling to them so they can not escape when you fall asleep.
Today's tribute is all about sleep. Glorious, undisturbed sleep. I miss you and I long to have you visit again.
I am so tired.
I feel like I cannot function today and I need to clean up this house and take the kids to swim lessons. I don't want to.
I want to go back to bed.
Sleeping with my son is like sleeping with an octopus. He never stops moving and always has parts of his body flinging towards yours.
I can't seem to reason with him about these fears of his.
About a month ago, he saw a barn fire and now he is convinced that our house is going to burn down. If you listen to him long enough, his argument is so convincing and so sincere, that it cause you to check the smoke alarms.
Through tears, he says things like, "It's too scarwee to sleep by myself, mommy. Sleeping with you or daddy is better cause all the scarwees disappear."
"How do the firemen know how to get to our house?"
"What if the fire alarm doesn't wake everyone up?"
"Are you scarwed of smoke?"
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated as I'm literally running on empty and starting to develop a fear of fire too.
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About Me
- kisatrtle
- I'm a 41 year old (gasp) freelance writer, school cafeteria manager, wife and mother. I have three children and one anxious and overweight beagle. I use my blog to make others laugh, to share some cool crafts, to document my lunchlady adventures and to lament about the challenges faced by us all on the journey called life. Thanks for visiting. Please leave some crack...um...I meant some comments.
8 random thoughts:
Oh, this breaks my heart. Luckily I've never had an issue like this........wish I could help. Wishing you a good long nap today!
Oh, I'm with you on this one. I've had about 2 weeks of interrupted sleep. My 6 year old and 4 year old seem to be taking turns waking up at night. I know that I always had an overactive imagination. It looks like I passed it down to my kids. I really hope that you get a good night's sleep! Your son's pleas to stay with you could break your heart. That barn fire scared him so much. I wish I had some advice for you.
Aw man! Poor little guy... And poor sleep deprived you! When I was little I actually was similarly afraid of sleeping, and fire or break-ins and other bad things happening when I was asleep... but maybe not to the same point that he is currently.
I think my parents partially allayed my fears through very long and elaborate bedtime prayers, in which we asked Jesus to protect every single tiny thing in the house lol.
Maybe you could also reassure him that your dog is on evening back-up patrol against fires? Dogs have a good sense of smell, so maybe you could tell him that the dog would smell smoke and wake everybody up if something was wrong.
Also, if he associates electricity with fires (I did cuz we had a plug go all crazy sparky one time, and traumatized me) you could make a big deal about unplugging appliances and things before bedtime. And show him how the fire extinguisher works? In my nightmares, I never could figure out how to work the damn things, and I think it increased my waking fears too.
Anyway. I have no idea if those ideas are remotely age appropriate... but as someone who still deals with anxiety lol, they at least seem somewhat reassuring inside my head... Which maybe betrays too much about the inside of my head. ;P
Hope it gets better for him! And that sleep and you can become friends again lol
Wow. Maybe you could take him to visit a fire house? Talk to a real fire fighter. Maybe they could calm some of his fears. Just a thought. :) Good luck and hope you get a little rest today. Your dirty house can wait.
OH no! Poor little guy. I sure do hope he gets over all his fears very quickly and you can get some rest soon! Best wishes!
Never went through quite the same thing, but the Son developed a real fear of closets at about age 4. Eventually had him sleeping in the family room for a bit until the fear passed.
Good luck on getting some sleep.
Call the Fire Department. Maybe they can talk to him and answer all those questions. After all, they are the experts. Its worth a shot.
After learning about fire alarms and Co2 at school, Kendal was terrified to get a Co2 detector because she was convinced that getting one would cause a Co2 leak. She didn't understand the concept of preventative measure. That was a real fun time.
Wendy,
AWWW! Poor little guy! He sounds like my youngest...my hubby is a volunteer fireman so he always sees daddy going off to "help somebody whose house is on fire." What we did was get the kids to help us with an escape plan, practice fire drills, learn to "fall and crawl", "stop, drop, and roll", etc. We taught them to look for smoke under the doors, touch the door to see if it feels hot, all that kind of stuff. It seems to empower them to know that there are things they can do to help themselves if this ever happens. The biggest thing with kids is that they tend to hide when they hear the alarm, so you have to get them used to being ready to crawl toward the nearest exit when they hear it, and meet up at your "safe place." Also, most fire departments will be willing to talk to your kids, and give demonstrations, etc. That might help...
As for the scared to sleep alone thing, mine still do this too. I got them a CD player and some soothing music to listen to, along with a night light and sleeping buddy. Some days it works, some days not. just hang in there....Someday soon we will all get to sleep as much as we want!
Blessings!
Word of the day: miphoses
this is the process of cloning myself.