Fear

I am really at a loss of what to do about Tate's fear of everything. It's concerning. Aside from the fact that he has terrible nightmares and night terrors almost every night, he is genuinely scared when he goes to bed, so getting him to sleep is so difficult. He has a vivid imagination and will fear things that he claims are in his room...anything from a monster to a turtle. The thing is, he is really, genuinely scared. He says, I want to sleep somewhere else! I don't like my room! He will shake and cry and be so distraught that he can hardly verbalize what he's scared of and between his blubbery cries, if he can verbalize it, we're lucky to understand what he's saying. We have to make him take deep breaths and calm down before he tells us what's wrong. So he'll get calmed down and then when he tries to tell us what's scaring him, he starts to panic and cry again.

Last night was so sad. He was terrified of something in his closet and was literally shaking and when I tried to pick him up to carry him to the closet and show him nothing was in there, he didn't want to come to me because I was too close to the closet. When he finally did, I started to walk him over there and he completely freaked out. It was so sad. It breaks my heart and I don't know what to do. Aside from that, Sean and I are TIRED! When he wakes up in the night, if he's having a night terror, he will flail his body all over his bed and so we go in there to make sure he doesn't fall off of the bed. If he's having a nightmare, he will cry and cry and cry when he wakes up that he's scared. When he cries like that, it is blood curdling screams of fear and he will go on and on like that forever. We've tried to let him "cry it out", but he's just too scared. When we go in there, he will be shaking and terrified and it takes a long time sometimes to calm him down. The longer we let him cry, the longer it takes to calm him down and most times, if he cries too long, he won't go back to sleep...even if it's the middle of the night! He's been known to wake up at 3 or 4 am and be so scared and not go back to sleep at all. We've even been desperate and brought him in our bed and he still wouldn't go back to sleep.

He also is scared to go down our hallway towards his bedroom in the evenings if the light is off in the hallway. He'll start to walk down the hallway and then it's like fear overtakes him and he turns around and runs back to us and says, "I need the light on to go back there." Or he'll say to himself quietly, "there's no monsters in there" like he's trying to reassure himself that he shouldn't be scared.

He's scared of other little things too. Toys that are too noisy, many dogs that are more active, the vacuum, pretty much anything really noisy scares him. I can handle that stuff, but the issues he has at night are disturbing and break my heart! We talked to his doctor about it and there was no real answer from him. Pretty much that some kids just have night terrors and night mares and that we should just go in his room when they happen to make sure he doesn't hurt himself and to comfort him and that due to kids vivid imaginations at this age, it's not that uncommon. He just said that it will hopefully pass. I just think that Tate's case is more severe, but maybe not. I think it's hard to know unless you witness it and see the terror that goes through his whole body. It's just so disturbing and it's getting to the point that it happens about 6 out of 7 nights a week.

He is tired and so are we!