Monsters!

Connor has monsters that visit him at night. He’s pretty consistent with his story and we’re not sure where it came from. He doesn’t watch television shows with monsters and it only seems to happen when he’s sleeping. The first time that the monsters appeared we were alerted by a piercing scream from upstairs. Jorma went up to check on him and he was awake, staring off in the corner in a zombie-like manner screaming. Jorma couldn’t do anything to soothe him and it seemed that Connor might be having a night terror. It probably didn’t help the situation any that Jorma reported that the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up at full attention during this incident.

When we woke Connor up in the morning, we asked him about it. He said, “There were monsters in my room. They came out of the hole in the corner.” And pointed to the right corner of his room. We tried to spin it a little bit and said, “Really?! What did they do?!” in a happy excited voice, like monsters only come to lucky girls and boys and were just SO FUN! Connor responded that the monsters went to the grocery store after they left him and then brought him some cake. We played up the story so that in the event that Connor was seeing something that we couldn't maybe it wouldn’t freak him out. I even launched into an animated story about how monsters are friendly and only want to protect him and bring him sweets.

It seemed to work and the night terrors went away, although we still have regular discussions about the monsters. We don’t instigate these discussions and make sure that he doesn’t get undue attention for them, lest we be forced to listen to him talk about trolls in the attic and anything else he might be able to spin into a tale of mystery.

After the monsters made their first or second appearance I smudged the house. I mean that’s what any normal parent would do upon the appearance of monsters, right? My Amber resin got a little bit out of control at the top of the stairs, setting off the smoke detector and the husband. Jorma disassembled the detector, shaking his head at me and then wandered back downstairs more miffed that I had interrupted his game of NetHack than the fact that I had filled the hallway with smoke. He’s a good man, that one.

The monsters still return on a regular basis, but we haven’t had any more night terrors. It will be interesting to see if the monsters still appear when Connor moves into his new room. Maybe he’ll give up and move on to something completely different. Maybe dragons in the closet.