Padon has started to have bad dreams. One night we were driving up Fire Trail Road and I looked up, through the windshield, to see Bats flying in the sky, swooping in and out, catching bugs. It was so cool, and I enthusiastically told Padon. This prompted nights for bad dreams for Padon about Bats in his room that were flying around with red eyes and who were eating Walter's face. We took the friendly looking stuffed bats down from the edges of his curtains and told him that there were no bats to be scared of. That bats weren't mean. Weeks later he kept telling me about the bats outside his window trying to get in. I looked out his window to assure him that everything was fine, to lean back, close his curtains and see for the first time the embroidered shear blue bats sewn on his curtains. I knew they were there but they were so cartoonish it never dawned on me that they maybe the bats he was talking about. I said "Padon are you talking about these bats?" to which he gave me an exasperated "Yeah, Mommy! That's what I been talking bout!" I promptly turned the curtains around. This lead into their being Monsters in his room. We do have mice in the house, and in the coldest part of winter, what sounds like roof rats. Worried that if I explained this to him, it would start a whole new set of nightmares I told him that it really was nothing, and that I wouldn't let anything happen to him. I then made the mistake to let him watch a movie on Netflix called Little Monsters. A movie about a monster that lives under Fred Savage's bed, you learn that the monsters really are nice and lead a fun inter-dimensional life. This prompted Padon to plead with me, one night, to lift up his very heavy full size bed and box spring so I could let the monsters out. I had just affirmed that the monsters were real. I then introduced the air freshener technique that I had seen on TV once, where you walk around the room spritzing Air Fresheners while saying "Monsters, monsters, go away. Monsters don't like monster spray." Theis seemed to help a little but by then Padon seemed to clue in on all the attention he was getting from this and how much longer it took to go to bed. Not to down play his nightmares, which were real, and were causing him to wake up screaming in bed (heck, Walter's face was being eaten off by bats!!!). It took probably 6 months for the every day talk of no there aren't monsters, no there isn't anything hiding outside, bats are wonderful special animals, I used to want to have one as pet, and no you can't sleep in our bed again. I hear 6 years old is an age for nightmares. I wonder if it will get much worse. I think that maybe life stresses have something to do with it. It's tough business growing older.
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