Scaredy Cats R' Us

Witches and werewolves, spooks and skeletons... 'tis the Halloween season and Andrew has developed a new trick, that is not so much of a treat.  He is trying out a new emotion - fear.  This particular emotion has evaded us so far, and we have often secretly prided ourselves on how brave he has always been... especially being a child of mine - the Queen of all Scaredy Cats. 

He has not, however, learned the emotion of embarrassment yet. 

Yes, I am willing to admit it.  As a child, I had the most overactive imagination you could imagine, and I frequented my parents' bedroom floor in a sleeping bag for far longer than I would like to share.  I was constantly convinced that someone, somewhere, was trying to get me.  I eventually learned to adapt - by turning the channel at the first 2 seconds of horror movie previews, by being border line OCD with locking doors and windows, and by developing the ultimate sign of maturity - the understanding that the world does not revolve around me and not all evil people are trying to "get me" at all times.  I would also add, that moving in with Mike and sharing a bed with a strong man every night has helped comfort me as well.  ;)  

But, enough about me and how crazy I am... this is about Andrew and his newest idiosyncrasy.  Some of it, I hope, is his desire to see our reaction and his testing of our ability and willingness to "protect" him (almost like another form of testing boundaries and limits, which he has also started doing more and more, as normal toddlers tend to do).  He used to love slides, carousels, baths and the vacuum.  Now, each of those things seem to suddenly make him nervous.  For example: the vacuum.  He will go get it for me from the closet, plug it in, and then as soon as I flip the switch, he runs for Daddy to pick him up.  This from the child who just months ago cried because the handheld vacuum he insisted on playing with died while he was still vacuuming.  (It just dawned on me, maybe I should have been more worried about his peculiar fascination with the vacuum then I should with him being afraid of it.) 

These bath pictures were taken about a month ago, but now we have less smiles
and more arguments about bath time, despite bubbles, colored water and markers.

"So, what? Lots of kids are afraid of vacuums," you say?  Well, just within the past couple weeks, he all of the sudden starts saying, "Run! Monsters are coming!"   Due to my craziness, I have been careful to only expose Andrew to the Sesame Street monsters... so I can only guess one place where he learned to "run" from monsters.  Daycare.  I don't know why this upsets me so much, but I think I am just honestly surprised by how much fear is a learned response.  If you think about, its an obvious thing I guess... take Amanda. 

I told her a story about how Andrew started squealing the other day because a pincher bug crawled out of his toy and across his hand.  Her reaction was that she would have done the same thing (as most of us would, I think).  But, when this happened to Andrew, I tried really hard not to match his squeals, because I didn't want to upset him more by showing just how much the bug freaked me out too.  Amanda said, "You don't want him to like bugs, do you?"  Yes, as a matter of fact I do.  But then, I had a flashback to when Amanda, Liz and I were little. We were playing in the driveway one day, when a poor caterpillar dropped out of a tree on to the back of Amanda's shirt.  Well, Liz and I shrieked in terror, pointing at cute little Amanda's back, but not helping her (she couldn't have been more than 5 years old).  Thankfully, Mr. Blanchard came to the rescue, taking the caterpillar off her shirt and comforting Amanda, while Liz and I giggled nervously out of fear.  Maybe, if I had not been afraid myself, and just gone and removed the caterpillar, showed it to her and explained that one day it would be a beautiful butterfly, just maybe, little Amanda would not have developed this fear of creepy, crawly bugs herself.  Perhaps, I had taken away her innocent curiosity of bugs that all kids seem to have, until someone teaches them not to.  Sorry Mandy! Just one of the many things you can blame me for and don't need to pay a therapist for now!  Happy Birthday! 

And for that reason, I was frustrated that Andrew had already learned this new response of fear to things that don't really need it.  Do I want my child to be a dare devil that doesn't understand his own mortality or have a healthy respect for things that could do him harm?  Of course not, but I do want him to not live his childhood like I did... on his parent's bedroom floor. :)

Andrew is not afraid of haircuts (thank goodness)! 
It may be due to the endless supply of lollipops they give him.

 

Last weekend, Andrew was really sick with a high fever.  It turned out to be yet another ear infection (first in 8 months), but he definitely gave Mommy and Daddy a scare!

 

 

He learned how to take his temperature though!