2yr old terrified to sleep

platypus

Just wondering has anyone gone through anything similar.

My 2.5 yr old daughter woke up wed night with what appeared to be a nightmare. She mentioned a frog. She was terrified and refused to lie down or even put her feet under covers and just clung on to either me or my wife. Since then she has point blank refused to lie down or go asleep even on a couch. Sometimes she thinks there is a frog on her. She is still obviously completely terrified both to go asleep and that there may be so something under any duvet in house. The last few nights we have let her go asleep in our arms and then left her on couch before bringing her up to our bed. When she wakes during night she is absolutely petrified, jumps and goes rigid with fear when you hold this.

It's now 4 days since the nightmare, and there is not much sign of her getting less scared. We have no idea what triggered it. If anyone has any idea how to calm her and get her back happy to go to bed it would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Roesy

platypus wrote: »

Just wondering has anyone gone through anything similar.

My 2.5 yr old daughter woke up wed night with what appeared to be a nightmare. She mentioned a frog. She was terrified and refused to lie down or even put her feet under covers and just clung on to either me or my wife. Since then she has point blank refused to lie down or go asleep even on a couch. Sometimes she thinks there is a frog on her. She is still obviously completely terrified both to go asleep and that there may be so something under any duvet in house. The last few nights we have let her go asleep in our arms and then left her on couch before bringing her up to our bed. When she wakes during night she is absolutely petrified, jumps and goes rigid with fear when you hold this.

It's now 4 days since the nightmare, and there is not much sign of her getting less scared. We have no idea what triggered it. If anyone has any idea how to calm her and get her back happy to go to bed it would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Hi Platypus,
As someone who suffers from her fair share of nightmares and night terrors I have a lot of sympathy for your little girl but no definite solutions to offer really. Was listening to the parenting slot on Moncrieff there lately and the psychologist they had on basically said that in those situations, when it happens, it's better to bring them back to their own bed and show them there are no monsters in the cupboard or in your case frogs. You may have done that already though. I wonder would pulling out the bed with her and taking off the covers and redressing it with her help show her there is nothing to worry about?

platypus

Roesy wrote: »

Hi Platypus,
As someone who suffers from her fair share of nightmares and night terrors I have a lot of sympathy for your little girl but no definite solutions to offer really. Was listening to the parenting slot on Moncrieff there lately and the psychologist they had on basically said that in those situations, when it happens, it's better to bring them back to their own bed and show them there are no monsters in the cupboard or in your case frogs. You may have done that already though. I wonder would pulling out the bed with her and taking off the covers and redressing it with her help show her there is nothing to worry about?

Thanks for the reply

Tried all that already, we have pulled covers off her cot and all other beds in house she refuses to go into any of them. While I understand the idea of getting her back to her own bed I don't think there is any way it would work at the moment. She seems absolutely terrified, way beyond the normal upset you get with a slightly scared kid or a child who wants to sleep in your bed. From my own experience and speaking to other parents it seems unusual for a child to stay frightened for days after a nightmare.

At the moment she will only sleep in our arms without any contact with a bed or couch. If she wakes up during night she panics completely. She also sometimes demands "Daddy mind me" looking to be picked up during day, obviously worried,which would be completely out of character.

Neyite

I've seen on another forum, parents using monster spray. You wash out and re label a spray bottle, which you then fill with water and squirt under the bed or on the floor of the cupboard to get rid of them. It can sometimes convince them.

Big Bag of Chips

One of the parenting programs on telly had a child who was afraid of monsters in their wardrobe. So the monster fairy came and left some magic dust to sprinkle around that would make all the monsters leave the room or stop the monsters from getting into the room.

sillysocks

The poor thing. Our little girl had nightmares, we had a piece of lavender or something stuck to a card that happened to be on the mantelpiece and when she took a shine to it we moved it into her room, put it on her wall and every so often she rubs the'magic grass'. She thinks rubbing it with her hand gives her special powers to stop nightmares and it sends her to bed happier. Sometimes then if she has a nightmare she'll just wake up and say the grass must have worn off and can she rub it again and that soothes her back to sleep again.

Ken.

Is there anything to be said for bringing the child to a place where there is frogs and showing her that frogs aren't scary.

pwurple

Our daughter is sometimes afraid of an ambulance under her bed.

I usually make a big show of shooeing the imaginary ambulance out from under the bed, and pushing it out the front door. I do a very stern finger-waving at the ambulance and tell it not to come back in, No Ambulances Allowed. I then go into her again and tell her it's locked out in the garden, naughty ambulances are not allowed in and I'll be watching out for it.

Tigerpig

It may be worth reading stories about sleep time, to let her sit with the idea of sleep being a nice thing! :-)
that usually works wonders.
also if she attends a creche or playschool, it would be a good idea to say it to her key worker as they may know if something or someone in the school portrayed sleep in a different way unintentionally. It is amazing what children will interpret from anything.
hope you find a sleepy solution soon.

NormalBob Ubiquitypants

I had night terrors as a child. My mother found that there was a regular pattern, as in two hours after going to sleep I had a night terror. So she sort of woke me enough that it was enough to disturb the sleep pattern but not enough to actually wake me. After a couple of nights it didn't happen again.
Not sure I agree with the monster spray idea. Wouldn't that confirm that monsters actually exist and are around her?

Neyite

NormalBob Ubiquitypants wrote: »

Not sure I agree with the monster spray idea. Wouldn't that confirm that monsters actually exist and are around her?

Possibly, but at 3am on a school night for the 4th night in a row, you'll try anything to get them to settle rather than spend an hour and a half logically explaining the illogical.

Big Bag of Chips

The whole idea of the monster spray or the monster dust etc is that it doesn't matter how often you tell kids that monsters or whatever don't exist.. They don't believe it! They are still afraid.

So rather than trying to convince them they are wrong, you just work with what you have and that is a child who fully believes that there is something hiding in her bed/wardrobe whatever and you work to chase it out of the house rather than convince her that it's not there to begin with.