Calling all monsters and trolls- It’s a tea party!

Like many preschoolers out there, Big S is also scared of monsters and darkness in general.I’m sitting here wondering, how I can help ease Big S’s fears of darkness and monsters. Her imaginations run so wild that she cannot control her thoughts. The girl can concoct some serious scary stuff ( future horror movie maker!).

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• We walk together into all the rooms, turn on the lights and make sure there are no monsters or trolls running in our home.
• We talk about them, we re-assure her that her room and our home is a safe place, but boy her imaginations get the best of her.
• We talk about what’s real and what’s not.

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But after all these, she can even make me think at-times – Is there something lurking up there? Did she really see something? God! I hope not. I’m just kidding. Even though, it is all a normal part of growing up, helping her cope with her fears is easier said than done.

Well, this what I said during one of those long conversations about monsters.

Me: You know what ? Let’s invite all those pesky monsters and throw them a tea-party. She looked at me like “ mom are you kidding?”

Big S : Aaaa.. okay – May be they will be my friends and don’t scare me anymore – right mommy ?

Me: Of course! May be they will even leave because you were so nice and never come back to bother you.

I had no clue where I was going with this, but since she was also on board with the idea, I guess we wanted to give it a shot . What’s the worst that can happen – “Mommy they are back again ?” Worth a shot I thought.

Well , we got busy planning .

Me : Now, where can we find them S ?

Big S : I don’t know. They might be hiding mom.

Me: Well let’s draw their face on the balloons and pretend.

Big S : Oh ya.. you can draw some and I can draw some.

I went with that. We got busy blowing up some balloons and giving our pretend monsters some face. She drew a few and even named them – Scrubber face and spiky guy !

Right about now, the seriousness melted away and fun set in. It became all about drawing faces on balloons and setting up their table and finding them food to serve. She had so many ideas.

Big S :  Let’s make lemonade, or may be fruit punch. Monsters don’t drink chocolate juice ( that’s her Chocolate soymilk) right mommy? We also need sticky tape to make the monsters sit at the table.

Big S : Mom, I need my giraffe and my humongous bumble bee to come for the party too.

We set them all up and lemonade & cookies served. I know it’s a tea-party- but sorry folks- we liked lemonade better.

She was so happy . When it was all done, she pulled the balloons off the table and bounced them with her Lil sister and had a blast – literally.

Now the big question y’all want to ask – Did it work ?

The reveal  – Kinda. However, some new guys just moved in!

[heading style=”1″]Moms Mini SoapBox[/heading]

You might also ask by having a tea party, am I letting her buy into the concept of monster? But you know what guys, the whole talk about “Monster are not real they are pretend” goes way over her head. At this age, even though they know pretend food, dress up, pretending to be a pirate or princess,  the concept of real and fake is still a bit hazy. TV scares even though they know it is just TV. It just scares them. So instead of bombarding her with another long drawn out pretend/ real lecture we had fun playing with those pesky guys.

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