Afraid of Her Room

My daughter has become afraid of her room.   It’s been a rather quick progression over the past two weeks.   We’ve been trying to figure out what the trigger or triggers were and how to get her back to being comfortable and feeling her room is a safe place to be.

I wonder if some of it could be Halloween.  We had a lit pumpkin in their room as a night light.   We put up some decorations and I’d been reading Halloween books to them.   Nothing was particularly scary, but it was a change with a theme that she might have associated with scary things.

She also had her vision disrupted this past week with the Healon added to both eyes.   We don’t know how she might be seeing things differently, especially with the detached retina she still has in the left eye.

She’s come downstairs in the middle of the night saying she heard a fly in the room.   There was one time she felt something tap on her back.    She’s said her room looks spooky several times.   Each of these events wasn’t a simple reassurance things were find, it was a big deal to her and she was upset.  

There was the one time she came downstairs and climbed on the bed.   She said, “I’m scared but I forgot what I was scared of.”   I talked to her like Dhruti had told me to.   She’s had a lot of scary things medically related and vision related happen to her.   She may be processing those things and it’s transferring to being scared at night.    We talked and she admitted she had been scared when she went into surgery.    I told her how we were all taking care of her and explained how we made sure she was okay.

She calms down, but there’s still something happening.   Today at nine in the morning she was crying pitifully when I got back from a run.   She said she wanted to get clothes on but her room (in the daylight) was too scary.   I walked her up and she was scared of multiple areas of the room, including the closet.    We went through all the spots and she calmed down.

Is her vision changing and scaring her or is it something else?   When we figure it out, I’ll let you know.

The Big Boy Update:  My mother was here today spending time with the children.   My son took my mother into our closet.   As they entered he said, “don’t get mad at me now.”  My mother asked him why she might get mad?   He said, “here are my mother’s shoes” and pointed to the shelf they were on.    They looked around the closet and counted lots of things.   They both noticed I have more shoes than my husband does.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter was playing with her good friend, Madison today.   They had gotten into the costume bin and were all dressed up.   Instead of playing ‘mom and baby’, they were playing ‘mom and teenager’.   Children grow up so fast, am I right?

I Ran On The Toe:   Remember the yucky big toe?   It’s gotten better and toughened up.   I ran five miles and it didn’t bother me at all.   What a relief.