The last few weeks we’ve been struggling to get the girls to go into the playroom. Zoë insists that there’s a ghost in her playroom that scares her (and Kaylee won’t go play in there without Zoë). This is a new phenomenon for us—they used to love playing in their playroom.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s daytime or nighttime with all of the lights on, Zoë will not go in the playroom without Brian or me. She is even afraid to go into the downstairs bathroom by herself, which is next door to the playroom.
She’ll walk back there and run back into the living room screaming that the ghost scared her. The other night the girls and I were upstairs brushing our teeth, getting ready for bed and Zoë asked if she could go downstairs to go potty. I said of course (Brian was still down there).
All of a sudden I heard her screaming at the top of her lungs in pain or fear, I couldn’t quite tell. I thought maybe she fell down the stairs, so I ran down the stairs to get to her and she started screaming that the ghost was trying to get her, burn her and pop her. That was the most descriptive she has been with me. Honestly, it really freaked me out that my sweet little girl thought someone or something was trying to harm her like that.
We have tried asking her what the ghost looks like, if it’s a boy or a girl, what it says to her, what it does to her, etc. She has told me it’s a boy and it’s big. That’s all she says.
I know that at this age, kids imaginations become very active and they have trouble separating reality from their imaginations, but it’s very hard to sit back and watch my little girl be scared of her own playroom.
I don’t want to downplay her fear or make her feel like she can’t trust us with her feelings, but I’m not sure how to help her move past this fear.
No More Babies in This House