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October 22, 2007
Nightmares
Last night sucked. It translated into a morning that sucked, too. And since it's taken me all day to get this written, I can tell you that that which caused the suck has only gotten worse.
Jamie is afraid of the smoke detector in her room.
A couple weeks ago, we went to an open house at our town's fire department. Most of it was pretty benign fun, but there was trailer set up to simulate a smokey house. We went in, a fireman talked to the kids about what to do it the smoke detectors go off, and then they fill the trailer with smoke. The detectors start going off, and then we practice getting down and out. Katie was fine, but Jamie flipped out as soon as the talking part was over. We talked about it afterwards, and I haven't heard a peep about it since.
Until last night.
Last night she was up three times. The first two were because she was scared of the noise her smoke detector made. She swore she heard it, but I never heard a beep out of it. The third time, she came in to tell me that she wasn't scared anymore.
Right before naptime, she started freaking out again about spending time in her room. It took a couple tries, but she calmed down and fell asleep, only to wake up crying an hour later. I was running out of calming ideas, so I had Rex put her to bed. He's been into her room at least three times since then, calming her. I anticipate a wakeful night.
The only reason I can figure this is cropping up now is that firemen are visiting her school to talk about safety this week. She's been nothing but giddy about them coming, but maybe she thinks they're going to make her go through the trailer again.
Logic, talk and love seem to be getting us nowhere, at least for more than two minutes at a time. I'm running out of ideas. I'm hoping her date with the firemen either resolves the problem, or brings it to a point where we can deal with it.
Posted by me at October 22, 2007 10:01 PM
Comments
Good luck! hopefully by now you guys have figured out a solution. You could try having her watch while you replace the batteries with quieter ones or something.
Posted by: anna at October 24, 2007 3:39 PM