This particular post is not about my own fears (of which there are several, but I’ve mostly learned how to deal with them), but those of my oldest daughter.
She’s been sleeping with her bedroom door 98% closed since infancy. But just after Thanksgiving, she decided her door COULD. NOT. BE. CLOSED. The whining and crying if it did close was ridiculous.
At first, I thought, and she kinda said, that it was because she could see the pretty Christmas tree from her bed if her door was left open. And because I remember how happy looking at the tree made me as a child, I was happy to let her see the tree.
But then the tree came down, and yet the door still couldn’t be closed. I didn’t understand, and I kept closing the door as soon as she was asleep so our comings and goings didn’t disturb her. (Her room is at the end of the hall, right across from the bathroom and door to the garage.) But she would wake up and start crying because her door was closed.
About the same time that the tree came down, she started talking about the eyes and pointing to her closet. It took me a couple weeks to figure out what she could possibly be talking about, but I finally did.
How do I convince her that these aren’t eyes, and that they won’t hurt or disturb her in any way? It would be much easier on all of us if her door was closed while she slept.
Oh wow! Those do kind of look like eyes!! Are the “eyes” still there if you open the closet doors?
The doors have to be open all the way for her to say the eyes are gone. And if they’re open, we can’t rock in the rocking chair and it cuts the light from her nightlight in half and then she’s worried about the dark.