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Showing posts from October, 2010

Monsters in the Closet: Settling Children’s Nighttime Fears

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When my first child came along and I didn’t know any better, I made the fatal “dad mistake” when it came to helping her battle the monsters in her bedroom. Unwittingly, I would frequently grab a baseball bat and head into her room in hopes of quelling her cries for help by standing ready to battle the imaginary monsters. As I lay on the floor swinging at those nonexistent creatures, I remember shouting out in a Ray Romano like voice from the television show Everyone Loves Raymond “there, I got all those mean monsters and now they are all gone.”  Gain cooperation with visual schedules at  SchKIDules But when I got up off the floor and attempted to kiss her goodnight so I could leave, she would announce that the monsters had escaped my attack and were now hiding somewhere else in the room. Each of my next attacks only led to the monsters mysteriously moving to yet another location when finally, my patience would be tried and I would usually end up snapping at her that the monsters we