I’m Afraid of the Pinball Machine

My children are working through some fears of late.   They’re becoming more aware that there are things in the world they could (or should) be afraid of, and that’s good.   But what happens at this age is they become afraid of irrational thing.   And that’s okay too because as adults we know their fears are irrational, they just don’t have the experience or knowledge to know so.

My daughter has been afraid to go upstairs to get dressed in the mornings for the last few weeks.   Mind you, she just came down from her room to find us after waking up, and if she remembered to get dressed before coming down there wouldn’t be an issue.   But she forgets sometimes and then her fear kicks in.   In this case she isn’t trying to work us over to have us bring her clothes, she really is scared.   If you go upstairs with her she wants to turn on all the lights and have you make sure the room (she was just in) is safe.   And she wants us to do this in the daylight, not night hours.

There’s also been a lot of, “what was that noise” activity happening at night after we shut the door, telling them to stop talking and go to sleep.    Last night they took turns coming out of the room and asking over the bridge, “mommy, I heard a thumping noise, what was that?”  I told my daughter I was  tapping dishes to get the water off them before drying them.   Then there was the walking noise (which was me walking) and then the voice noise that called their names.   I said that was me, yelling up at them, saying their names and telling them to quiet down.

The best one so far though was today when my son wanted to play Minecraft on the Xbox in the basement.  My husband has it set up so all my son needs to do is press one button on the TV remote, turn on the game controller and wait.   He stands at the sensor in front of the television and it recognizes his face saying, “Hello Greyson”.   Then in my son’s little six-year-old voice he can say, “Hey Cortana, play Minecraft” and it loads.   Hell, my son taught me how to do this because I didn’t even know how.

But I digress because this post is about being afraid of things.   So when my son asked if he could play Minecraft on the Xbox this afternoon I told him sure.   Then he asked if I could come help him.    I knew he didn’t need help though so I told him I knew he was capable and could do it without me.   Then he said in a shy voice, “but I’m afraid of the pinball machine”.

And I have to say, if I was six-years-old, I might be afraid of the pinball machine too.   It’s not the lights or the sounds, it’s the theme.   We have a Walking Dead pinball machine with zombies and guns and blood.   I told my son the pictures were just ink on paper, he didn’t have anything to fear.    But he replied, “yeah, but it’s what’s in those pictures that I’m afraid of.”  

So I walked downstairs with him until he got Cortana to get Minecraft loaded at which point my son was so mentally engrossed the pinball machine was out of his mind.

The Big Boy Update:   My son and daughter were not getting along with each other, me or the world this morning.   I went in to our bathroom to get ready, hoping they would settle down with some pancakes in them but no, my daughter came flying in only minutes later, screaming and shutting the doors.   I heard my son but didn’t know what was going on until I went out to check.   I found him sitting at his place, eating his pancakes, with the hammer from the garage beside his plate.   What exactly is that for, I asked him?  He said it was to break down the door because his sister had locked him out of our room.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   My daughter asked me yesterday, “can you tell me a grown-up word?”  I told her sure, and said things like mitochondria, dolichocephalic and sesquipedalian.   She agreed those sounded like grown-up words.   But we all knew what she was asking, right?  So she tried again, “is there anything inside your mouth that we can’t say?”   Wow, she nailed that one.   I had to admit that yes, some words she wasn’t allowed to say.   So of course she wanted examples.   I got away with “damn” and then she said, “my brother says we can’t say ‘shit’.  Oh, I just said it…”