Our Monster

It appears we have a monster in our house. Two nights ago around 3am Orin scrambled into bed with us. Since he comes into our room pretty much every night and sleeps on the floor it wasn't far for him to go to get into our bed. He was shaking and saying something about a monster. We were totally out of it, but tried to convince him to get back on the floor. It was to no avail. This isn't the first time he's woken us up because he's had a bad dream. Sometimes he wakes up scared and just wants to hold our hand until he falls back to sleep. This was different. He was freaked out. Damien ended up going to sleep in the other room because there wasn't room for all of us. Orin practically slept on me the rest of the night. If I tried scooting away from him he'd get upset and just get closer. The next day he talked a little about a monster. But around 4 or 5 he had a break down. We're not sure why it started then, but it must have been because it was getting dark. I've never seen him like that before. He was shaking and a little hysterical. He might calm down for a little while and then lose it again. This went on pretty much all night. We let him go to sleep in the play room - there are windows so he can see us in the living room. He slept on our floor all night without a problem. But when he woke up, it started again. He told us he didn't like our house any more. He didn't want Damien to leave for work. He wanted to go to New Orleans. Sometimes he said he wanted to live with Mimie, sometimes it was Nina and Pops, but he didn't want to be in our house. After breakfast he said he wanted to lay down so we just laid in my bed for 20 minutes. It was strange because he'd lose it, get over it, be ok for 30 minutes, then all of a sudden start sobbing again and just start off saying, "I don't like this house anymore, I don't want to live here anymore!" He cried to go to school all morning. He just wanted to be out of the house. He finally convinced me to go outside (it was 30 degrees out) but they didn't last long. We went to the library instead. I told him he had to stay quiet at the library (no breaking down there). He started to once, but I reminded him of what I had told him. He was able to hold it together until we got back in the car. Even when he was not crying he was definitely stressed. I've never seen my energetic boy so sad. All day. It was starting to depress me a little! We tried everything to convince him that everything was ok. We prayed together. Told him that God was protecting him - as well as us. We tried the "it's just pretend route." We tried the "he just wants to be your friend route." We had a book about a monster recently. It came into a little girl's room every night. Finally the girl realized she was just looking for her mother. We tried that, but he didn't like that explanation either. He told us he wanted to get big and go to work with daddy every day so he didn't have to be in the house. He said so many funny but sad things. I wished I had written them all down but I was usually holding him and trying to reason with him. At one point during the day he was crying so I prayed again. Afterward he went into the play room and I followed him. He asked me to leave. I said why? He said, "I want to pray alone." He closed the door to the room but I stood outside of it and could hear him praying out loud, asking God to please not let him be scared and not let the monster come back. He then ran to his room to get his Bible. He opened it up and wanted me to help him find the pictures of Jesus. Then he said, "I want this Jesus to come here and protect me." I told him that we couldn't see Jesus but that he was all around us and protects us. I told him he lives in our hearts. He broke down again and said, "I don't want Jesus to live in my tummy." Here is what we know about the monster. He is little and green. He doesn't have arms or a body (I guess his legs come out of his head) but he has big teeth. He says, "Whomp Wha, Whomp Wha," over and over. He comes out of the fan. Orin has been scared of the fan for a long time. He always makes us keep it off because of monsters. Anyway, the monster came out of the holes in the fan because it was on. The monster was very mean and was juggling (yes juggling him). It was obviously a very vivid dream. Ironically, he didn't have the dream last night but he is still so scared it will come back. Anything we told him might help him calm down in that moment, but he's still break down again. Well, today around noon he had an epiphany. He was on the toilet and asked me to flush it. Then he looked up with a big smile and said, "I have a great idea, mommy!" If the monster comes back, we can flush him down the toilet!" So, from that moment one, we've gone with the mean route. I.E. instead of telling him to try to make friends and be nice to the monster, we're going with flushing him down the toilet and calling him, "stupid monster." When daddy came home for lunch we all decided to draw a picture of the monster and flush it down the toilet (to scare the monster so he wouldn't come back). Orin loved that idea. We yelled at the monster while we flushed and said, "See monster, this is what will happen to you if you try to come back!" Orin did better for a while. He had one or two more episodes this evening. At one point I told him that we weren't going to let the monster kick us out of our wonderful house. We yelled that to the monster that he couldn't scare us. But that didn't work the second time we tried it. Then Damien suggested we make a fort. That worked wonders. For the first time in 24 hours he acted like himself. We built it in the playroom so he could fall asleep looking at us. He did great. I know of other 'tricks' people use to get their kids to not worry about monsters (e.g. leave a squirt water bottle with 'monster poison' with the kid at night so it it comes back he can squirt them) but with Orin's it's the anticipation of him coming back - not what to do when he comes back. We'll see. We'll just keep trying different things.

Above are some pictures of the fort, drawing the monster picture to flush, and the kids calling out to the monster telling him to come so we could flush him.