No Evil Sheep: Parenting Away the Monsters

So, I did a search and found a few articles on this topic already existed, and with the same solution I came up with, but they were from 2006 and VERY short, so I thought I'd go ahead and put my two cents in on it. I've written about my

personal experience with this about the Evil Sheep here as well so check it out for the full story of my little discovery.

The problem at our house started, oh you guessed it, not too long after Halloween! As much as I tried to keep the scaries away, they are in every store you go to that time of year, so they got in my daughter's head. Well, my daughter's always been a difficult sleeper anyway, so this really wasn't much of a surprise when it first started. What would happen is that she'd show up in bed with me and my husband in the middle of the night and be unwilling to go back to her own bed. Why? The monsters, of course. She's gone through these climb-into-our-bed phases off and on and always eventually gets over it, so I was silly enough to think she'd eventually get over this, too. Didn't happen.

To make a long story relatively short, it got to the point where I HAD to do something. She wouldn't go to bed in her own bed to start, even, so one night, out of total frustration, I chased the monsters out for her. I asked her where they were (under the bed, where else?) and then took the toys that were stored under there OUT so I could chase the little buggers out into the street and even yell at them to not come back. She thought that was pretty funny, and went so far as to "catch" a few in an invisible net of her own thereafter and dump them in the front yard as well. Back in her room I wasn't getting the feeling from her that she was totally convinced yet, so scrabbling for ideas, I ran to the laundry room and picked up some Febreze (if you don't know it it's kind of an air freshener thing) told her it was Monster Spray (this is the idea I discovered I am not the first to have when I did a search on here) and sprayed the whole room. I then left it by her bed so she could spray during the night if she felt the monsters approaching, and guess what, she was MUCH better after that! She sprayed a few times under the bed after that day as a follow-up treatment, and now we've gone back to normal: mostly sleep-on-her-own-still-come-to-our-room-sometimes,-but-not-shaking-in-fear kind of nights.

I think the key is to be creative–as it tends to be most the time with parenting! My son, who's 3 right now, may not go for the Monster Spray concept if he goes through this phase further down the line. We might have to do an anti-monster dance or eat an anti-monster snack before bed (think garlic and vampires) that he can breathe on them with if he needs to. Who knows? I think the spray works well because most kids know what bug spray is and it feels authentic, though. Just don't be afraid to embarrass yourself, because whatever you try will probably work, especially if you give it a feeling of authenticity. And any feelings of embarrassment are well worth it when you start getting to sleep uninterrupted through the night again!