There’s a skeleton in the closet

The picture’s just a pretty picture and absolutely nothing to do with the post. If Rosemary wasn’t in bed already, I’d go take a photo of her wardrobe, or get her to dress up in her skeleton costume to illustrate it properly. But, instead I want to show off this gorgeous picture (well, I think it’s gorgeous). I’ve wanted to take nice pictures of flowers for a long time. I’ve attempted it, but they never look anything like what I’m trying to capture – especially the colours. But, now I have a new camera (*), I can take pretty pictures of flowers (this was taken using the Macro setting).

OK. Back to the actual post…

Rosemary has recently returned to a fear she had a while back. Of skeletons in her room. We know why (kind of). It’s because the heating’s gone on and the noise the radiator makes when it’s coming on sounds like skeletons clattering about (to an overly imaginative four-year-old, anyway). She knows that’s what it is, but she can’t help being afraid anyway. In fact, she says, ‘I know there aren’t any skeletons, except inside our bodies, but my imagination shows me skeletons and I’m still scared.’

The last time this fear surfaced, I addressed it by providing her with a song to protect her against the skeletons. (I did also reassure her that there weren’t any skeletons, of course.) I told her about the fear I had as a child and how I dealt with it. Who knows whether that was the right thing to do, but it felt right to me. (If you’re interested, my fear was of an evil witch who would come and get me whenever I flushed the chain, and I had a dragon to protect me, called Dreaming Dragon. To be safe, I had to chant ‘Dreaming Dragon, Dreaming Dragon, Dreaming Dragon…’ all the way from the loo to my bed.) The song went ‘Skeleton, skeleton, go away, skeleton, skeleton, go away.’ Yes, very clever and original. It worked, though. But was I wrong to buy into her imaginary skeleton scenario? If I’d tackled it properly back then would they not have surfaced again now?

The song isn’t working. Well, actually, she’s refusing to try the song at all. She’s insisting on one of us coming with her to go to the loo. To go anywhere near her room or the loo. And staying with her.

OK, so you don’t need to be a child psychologist to work out that it might have something to do with starting school as well. But what’s the solution?

I’ve been asking her to think up a solution (she’s usually very good at solving problems when she puts her mind to it), but she’s not coming up with anything. I’ve tried suggesting the song. I’ve tried reminding her (as has Chris) that it’s not actually possible for skeletons to walk round on their own. No joy. She did say, yesterday, at one point that she thought she might be nearly believing that there were no skeletons. So maybe it’s just a case of waiting it out. The trouble is, I can remember how totally and utterly real my fear was as a child. I also knew that there was no such thing as the witch, or the dragon, but I still had to do it and felt deep and crippling fear at the thought of not using my chant. So, I really don’t want to force her to do anything that might make her feel like that. Because it was horrible. I was wondering about searching for bone diseases and suggesting that she fill an imaginary rocket launcher with one of them and fire them at the skeletons. Is that a bit far-fetched, or maybe even morbid (though how you can avoid morbidity when tackling a fear of skeletons, I’m not sure)?

Thoughts? Tips? Similar problems? Other psychological manifestations of the trauma of starting school?

(*) All photographs taken with the fantastic Kodak EasyShare M580 Digital Camera, kindly provided by Kodak.