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There's a Monster Under My Bed!
Easing Toddler's Nighttime Fears By Lyn Mettler
Has the boogeyman been making the rounds at your house lately? Or 
maybe a ghost or even a scary alien? You're not alone. Nighttime fears, no matter what form they take, are common among toddlers.
When Michelle Flora's daughter Morgan was 18 months old, she suddenly started waking up crying at night and didn't want to go to bed. For two weeks, Flora, a 35-year-old mother of two from Huntington, Ind., and her husband were dumbfounded as to why their once easy-sleeping daughter was now developing problems at night.
Then, one hot summer night as the couple put her to bed, they opened the nursery window. Morgan began to cry, "Shut window. Baby fall out!" Flora quickly put two and two together. "We were reading a book we had been given as a baby gift," she says. "We read it every night before we went to bed. One of [the stories] in there was Rock a Bye Baby." Apparently, little Morgan was afraid she, too, would fall just like the baby in the story. "When we put that book away, she finally slept through the night," says Flora.
Nighttime fears often begin to show up in children around the age of 2 to 3 years. This may happen because children are learning to express themselves more clearly and can better explain their fears, says Dr. George Cohen, retired pediatrician and editor of the American Academy of Pediatrics' book Guide to Your Child's Sleep. "This is an age when kids begin to have some bad dreams or at least we can recognize that's what they are," he says.
Even though toddlers may communicate better, they still have difficulty distinguishing between fantasy and reality. So lots of things can become scary and take on a life of their own. According to Dr. Carl Hunt, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research in Bethesda, Md., this is a very normal part of child development. "These are stages and will pass without incident," he says.
How to Make a Monster
