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Today at school McKay learned about dream catchers. When I pick him and his friend Jaxon up from school it's always tough to get anything out of them about their day. The first thing to come up is usually what they had for snack and then if I'm lucky, what they did at recess or who was mean to who that day. Hardly ever anything about what they learned, unless I really probe.
But today McKay came right up to me and the first thing I heard about was dream catchers. "They're like a little net thing and you hang them up and they catch the bad dreams and let the good dreams through to you. Then, the bad dreams fall out in the morning."
It's not surprising to me that he would be really vocal about bad dreams being caught in a net. In fact, I imagine that his little dream catcher will be hanging in his room for a quite awhile. A few weeks ago McKay had his first nightmare. While on a trip with some friends to a really fun science museum, with tons of interactive things for kids to do, we all found ourselves in the earthquake house. A little simulated earthquake, complete with rumbling sounds, shook this little playhouse while we stood inside. It was not a dramatic or scary version of an earthquake, just supposed to be fun. Had I any idea of how not fun this would turn out to be I would have never let my boy step foot inside. And if I had let him, I definitely would have given him a thorough explanation of earthquakes and what that little house meant. But, of course, I had no idea.
The next night McKay woke up screaming. This does not happen. I knew something was especially wrong when he stayed in his bed and didn't come right into our room. I went in to check on him and he was terrified. He had been dreaming about being in the earthquake house all alone. "I was just standing in the earth shake house and the earth shake hurt my legs so bad." I pulled him into bed with us and we all fell back to sleep.
My poor boy was still very shaken the next morning. And the next. And the next. He gave me the third degree on earth quakes. Asked me every question his four year old mind could think of. At first I tried to tell him that earth quakes hardly ever happen and we shouldn't worry about them. Still terrified. Then I tried to tell him that I was in an earthquake when I was little and it was kind of fun. Not fun for him. I then switched to being prepared for an earthquake- told him where to go, what to do and that I would run to wherever he was if there were to be an earthquake. This just produced more questions. Finally, after a whole day of talking mostly about earthquakes alone, I had to resort to telling him there were no earth quakes in Oregon. Ever. But, did that do the trick. Nope.
He was terrified of loud noises. Even more terrified of being alone. No, not being alone, being more than a three foot radius away from me. Three feet! One morning I sat him and Ellery at the kitchen table with breakfast and a show on and explained that I was going to take a shower upstairs. Not even thirty seconds after I turned on the water, a hysterical McKay burst through the bathroom door. The noise of the water from downstairs sounded an awfully lot like an earthquake to him and he booked it upstairs.
Those next few nights were quite literally a nightmare for all of us. After sleeping in our bed for two nights we laid down the law. No getting out of bed. No sleeping with mom and dad. I don't want to go into all the details of those nights, because they are quite honestly some of my most shameful moments as a mother. . . as a person- and I'd like not to remember the details. But, I will say that we tried everything. We tried everything we could think of. And nothing worked. Patience, yelling, reasoning, threatening, extra night lights, sleeping on the floor in our room, even- I hate to even write it- spanking, did not keep that boy from screaming bloody murder in the middle of the night. He was terrified to fall asleep because he didn't want to have the nightmare again, and for some reason would wake up screaming throughout the night when he found himself alone in the dark.
The earth quake obsession lasted for about a week, and then earth quakes slowly faded and fires, loud noises, the dark and most especially being alone took over. It was so exhausting to talk him through all of these things and even more exhausting for me to not be able to go anywhere in the house without him. He would put off breakfast altogether to just stand by me as I got ready. I named him my little orbit because he did not leave my side. It was several more weeks before he would be alone.
Now it all seems to be over. He is going to bed like he used to and sleeping through the night. (What finally worked was promising him that we would check in him every five minutes, which we did and still do, until he falls asleep. Now though, he is usually asleep before we even check on him once, thank goodness.) He is now able to go upstairs by himself and he chooses to eat rather than watch me do my hair.
Now that I'm writing it I realize that it doesn't sound like a big deal, but it was seriously life altering for all of us for a couple weeks. I was completely depressed that he was so scared and felt horrible for not being able to make his fear go away- not to mention the toll that having my little orbit took on me. It was so hard for us to know how to handle it. We really did not know what to do. We didn't want to coddle him and feed the fear, while forming habits we would just have to break, but it was heartbreaking to see our child so afraid and not just want to just hug him all night and make everything all better. I'm so glad that he's back to his old self and has learned to let go of his fear.
I too learned something through this experience. Brian and I really have no idea what we're doing- this whole parenting thing. Our poor children just have to go through this trial and error thing as we try to figure it out. Now that's a pretty terrifying thought, isn't it? I hope we all make it.
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