Irrational Fears III: The Boo-Boo

Bottoms Up!

When a toddler becomes fearful of an object, the simplest thing usually is to make it disappear for a while. However, what does one do when she is afraid of her own body?

Last month, my two-and-a-half-year-old tripped on her way into church. I didn’t know it until we got home, but there was a tiny abrasion on her knee underneath her stockings. She knew it was there, and held onto her stockings for dear life, refusing to let me take them off. “Boo boo!” she cried.

Finally I got them off. “It’s just a little boo boo,” I reassured her, “It’ll be gone soon.” She refused to have it covered with a bandage. To her, bandages serve to remind her there is a boo-boo. I think she even thinks a bandage is part of the boo-boo. She felt better when I had it covered with pants.

For a whole week, I had problems every time I had to change her. She was dreadfully afraid of having her pants taken off. She didn’t want to see her boo-boo, small as it was. When she needed a bath, she covered it with a washcloth.

The second week, it had faded for the most part, but she knew the skin was not intact. Now she would inspect it carefully, note that it was still there, and beg for it to be covered up again.

Finally, at the end of the second week, the remains of it came off in the bath. “Look,” I said, “the boo boo is really gone now.”

She looked at it and was completely relieved. The next day, she allowed me to dress her in stockings for church again.

This whole episode made me think that, on a really fundamental level, infants understand that their bodies are holy. God made them perfect, and anything less than that is just not acceptable. As adults, most of us have long ago given up on perfection, and accept the breaking down of our bodies as inevitable. We all need to be reminded from time to time of what my little one seems to already know in her heart: that we are all vessels of the Holy Spirit.

“Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.”
I Corinthians 3:16-17

Irrational Fears II: The Yellow Singing Bird

At age two or so, many toddlers start developing irrational fears. For my littlest one, age 2 ½, this started a few weeks ago with her fear of “the bugasy”. Once I had made the cause of her fear disappear, it took about a week for her to forget about it. Then she started to be afraid of an innocent singing canary.

For her first birthday and Christmas, she received two collections of singing birds, created by the National Audubon Society: backyard birds, and water birds. The children love to sit in a pile of birds with her and make them all sing. This is what they were doing the afternoon before she suddenly took a fear to the yellow singing bird.

All of a sudden, I heard her scream, “NOOOO! No bird! Go away!” She could not have made herself more clear.

I made the bird disappear, but my seven-year-old son thought it was fun to get a reaction out of her. He took it out of the drawer where I had hid it, and showed it to her again. She screamed so loud it scared me.

For several days afterward, she would look on the top of the dresser, where I keep the birds in a wicker basket. I knew she was scanning them to make sure the yellow bird was not there. “It’s gone,” she would say, with satisfaction.

What made her suddenly be so scared of something that had formerly given her pleasure? The kids theorized that the yellow bird bore some remote resemblance to a “star monster” that they had seen on a Scooby Doo episode the same afternoon she had attached fear to the bird. Who knows?

I bought her a Winnie the Pooh and Tigger sweatshirt. She loves Pooh Bear and Tigger but refuses to wear it. Why? Good thing it was a larger size – hopefully by next fall she will be willing to wear it.

That reminds me of the purple winter coat my friend bought for my first-born when she was three. I was getting her into her car seat one day, when a spider crawled into the hood of the coat. She screamed until I got the coat off her, and refused to ever wear it again. My friend was not too happy.

Kids need to feel safe, and if they attach fear to an object, I believe the best thing is to remove the object, so that they can again feel secure. After all, they’re just things, right? And after a while, they will see it the same way.

“Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests know to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”
Phillippians 4:6-7

Irrational Fears: The Bugasy

I was changing my toddler, when what appeared to be a bug came flying over the changing table and landed on her chest.

“Aaah! A bug!” I cried.

My daughter flinched and screamed as well. I swatted at it, caught it, and realized it was a hairball, which had clung to Night Night the White Blankie.

My living room carpet gets vacuumed almost daily. Not only does she get cereal all over it on a regular basis. If there is anything resembling a bug, she will point it out and refuse to move until I have picked it up, identified it, and properly disposed of it.

Someone gave my kids this interesting little flashlight-light device. It projects a “galaxy” onto any surface you point it at. If the surface is far away, such as a ceiling, the galaxy is large. If it is close, it is miniscule.

The kids were fooling around with it and decided to point it at the baby’s stomach.

“Aaah! A bug!” she cried, clutching her stomach.

“It’s not a bug,” we explained, “It’s a galaxy.”

“A bugasy! No bugasy!”

I took away the toy, but she continued to hold her stomach throughout dinner, chanting, “No bug. No bugasy.”

This episode made me flash back to when my eldest was her age. She was afraid of animated dolls. Children at this stage of development are working hard at making sense of their world. My little one knew foreign objects didn’t belong on her stomach; my eldest knew that nonliving things should not roller skate or talk. Our job is to reconcile these inconsistencies with the scientific rules they have figured out on their own, so they can be at peace with the world and themselves.

The Bugasy Episode went on for a week, the kids occasionally teasing her with the galaxy light just to get a reaction from her.

The following week would be a new thing – but I’ll save that for another post.

Picture above: Bear has no fears as she makes herself at home in front of our new Amish electric fireplace.

My Own Personal Rainbow

“I set my bow in the clouds to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”
Genesis 9:13

Over the weekend, the History Channel had a special about the end of times. Since the time of Jesus, people have been reading into their own modern times and seeing the end as drawing near. The current financial crisis has made many fearful, and putting our troubles into the hands of big government yet again seems to draw us nearer to that end. On Saturday, the paper read, “Can the G7 Save Us?”

Happily, the History Channel ended with a scripture that my mother-in-law had quoted to me just last week: “But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”(Mark 13:32)

Then the Sunday readings spoke of God’s grace that will provide, and dealing with times of lean and times of plenty.

Philippians 4: 12 - 14, 19 – 20
12 I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want.
13 I can do all things in him who strengthens me.
14 Yet it was kind of you to share my trouble.
19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
20 To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Everyone feels the economic crunch on some level, no matter what their tax bracket. God promises to provide for our basic needs, and to give us the grace to deal with times of difficulty.

But then comes a promise of plenty for those who have faith in end times. Here I think is a scripture to give us hope, rather than fear, if we should live to see the Day of Judgment.

Isaiah 25: 6 - 10
6 On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of fat things, a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wine on the lees well refined.
7 And he will destroy on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations.
8 He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth; for the LORD has spoken.
9 It will be said on that day, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the LORD; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation."
10 For the hand of the LORD will rest on this mountain, and Moab shall be trodden down in his place, as straw is trodden down in a dung-pit.

This rainbow appeared directly above my house today, making me lean toward dwelling on the promises of a kind and merciful God.