Here is a list of the things that I can recall freaking out my son over the course of his short life so far. Most of these fears have been conquered. Some have not. Many are just super bizarre and puzzle us to this day. Enjoy!
Age: Less than 12 months.
Thing: A vibrating car-seat toy (the kind you pull down and it shakes back into position) we named “Sneezy”. Actually, he “named” it by happening to sneeze when we showed it to him for the first time. So it goes.
Source of Fear: No idea. He was cool with it right up until the moment he saw it “go” for the first time, then he totally wigged.
Fear Status: Conquered.
Age: About 15 months
Thing: A particular Shaun the Sheep episode
Source of Fear: Again, no idea. It was the scene where the farmer tries (and fails) to get the cat interested in Timmy’s lost teddy bear by shaking it around. As soon as the bear started shaking, the boy would lose his mind. This might be related to whatever the deal was with the “Sneezy” toy above.
Fear Status: Conquered. I recently streamed this episode (and others) with him watching to see if there was a glimmer of trepidation left in him about this. None. Actually, he denied ever seeing Shaun the Sheep at all, which really annoyed me because I must have seen each one of these episodes about twelve hundred times, and it’s not like I was watching them by myself, you know…
Age: About 15 months
Thing: The sound my DeWalt planer makes
Source of Fear: I was making an end table for my brother out of reclaimed wood from discarded pallets and any time the planer kicked on, the boy inside the house would start fussing. I figured that his new ears could hear frequencies that have long since decayed out of my auditory range and that the unknown sound from the garage was causing him distress. I had the wife carry him out into the driveway and look into the garage where he could see what was going on. I hit the switch and, holy cow, was that a horrible, horrible mistake - his vague unease instantly became a bright yellow nightmare. Full on waterworks, blubbery lip… the whole nine yards.
Fear Status: Conquered. He loves working in the shop, now, but hates loud noises in general.
Age: About 15 months
Thing: Animatronics
Source of Fear: A specific Halloween witch at Lowe’s. I was carrying him into the store looking for honey-do supplies of some sort and he all of a sudden starts going “No. No. No. NO. NO! NO!” (not shouting, but certainly getting more and more urgent with his ‘no’s) before I noticed we were walking ever closer to the decoration. I saw the connection with what he was worried about and backed away from that area. He calmed down immediately but kept craning around to make sure were were nowhere near it.
Fear Status: Semi-conquered. Animatronics of most kinds (even Santas) bother him to the point where he feels the need to ask rapid fire questions about whether they are plugged in, the range of their movements, how they work, etc. The questions are peppered with this “you believe me, right?” tone that is supposed to convince the listener he knows for sure they are not “real” or “dangerous”.
Age: about 18 months
Thing: Spinning globes (yep… globes)
Source of Fear: This one is a complete mystery to us. He was fine with seeing a static globe, but as soon as I gave one a little spin he freaked out and said over and over “[I] don’t like the portal!”. I was like, where the heck did you learn that word, wracking my brains over what TV show he could have possibly watched a “portal” suck something into another world or whatever. About this time this fear was generalized to any toys that spun freely on a stationary axis either vertical (globes) or horizontal (this wheel toy he had that spun and sang “Spin, spin a letter… What letter have you found…”) See-and-Says did not cause this reaction.
Status: Conquered
Age: About 20 months
Thing: His own shadow (again, yep…)
Source of Fear: We got rid of the pool table in the old house and turned that room into a family/play room. I replaced the lighting with some fairly bright tract types that happened to throw a sharp shadow onto the wall near a toy bucket near my office door. I guess he went to get a toy and the shadow startled him enough to make him back away and plead “Make the shadow-boy go away!”. Trying to convince someone that their shadow is harmless and is not trying to steal their toys is one of the weirdest things I have ever had to do.
Fear Status: Conquered
Age: 2
Thing: Video conferencing.
Source of Fear: I can only speculate that he thought that televisions should not actually engage you and demand over and over again what your status is: “How are you? Are doing good? What are you doing?”
Fear Status: Conquered, although, as outgoing as he is, he still has virtually no interest in this form of communication. I, for one, think this tech is straight up magic. Mainly because I am old.
Age: 2
Thing: A Halloween pumpkin I carved that year
Source of Fear: The pumpkin, I guess. It was just a goofy, free-form jack-o-lantern. He liked it for about 10 seconds then buried his face into my shoulder and said “I don’t want the jack o lantern to sing”. Frankly, I couldn’t agree more, but, like the shadow-boy thing, convincing someone that the pumpkin wasn’t going to suddenly burst into song is one of the weirder things I’ve ever had to do.
Fear Status: Conquered. He loves Halloween. He won’t shut up about zombies.
Age: 2
Thing: A walking, talking Bigfoot toy about 60% his height.
Source of Fear: When he saw the box in the toy store and the commercials on TV he was delighted and wanted one. We made a deal with him and said if he pooped in his potty 10 times then he could have it. We made a little chart so he could cross off the pictures of Bigfoot as he went. It took him nine days. I turned it on for the first time and it was loud and its movements were jerky and overly-deliberate. He immediately hid behind me and would only play with it if I was in the room with him.
Fear Status: Conquered, I guess. He no longer has it. He would probably not be bothered by it now because he would tower over the thing, animatronic or no.
Age: 3
Thing: Johnny Test
Source of Fear: There is an episode where Johnny is turned “gross” somehow and that was the absolute end of my son’s interest in this awesome show. Period.
Fear Status: Very Much Active. He refuses to even consider watching this. There is also a Phineas and Ferb that he warned one his friends about (she and her father have just started watching the show) that falls into this category.
Age: 4
Thing: Roller Coasters
Source of Fear: A 30-second ride at Busch Gardens. He was fine right up until the first dip.
Fear Status: In Play. If he is trying to convince someone that he is brave he will go on one but his act is super transparent. You can almost hear him counting down the seconds until the ride is over.
Age: 4
Thing: His bike
Source of Fear: One day we were on our way to the park, him merrily chugging away on his training-wheeled bike and me walking alongside. An elderly woman said “Oh, look at what a good job you are doing!” which caused him to look up proudly from the sidewalk and immediately drive into a crack that was one tire-width wide. Down he went like a ton of bricks - unhurt, but very much shaken. It wasn’t until after I bought my own bike months later that he would even consider getting back on his.
Fear Status: Conquered. He rides now.
That’s all I can think of for now. He hasn’t really collected any new ones over the past couple of years. If it wasn’t for the fact that he could make himself understood (well… kinda-sorta) at an early age I doubt many of the items on this list would be memorable to us at all. They would have just blended in with the general “kid reacting to confusing weirdness his new world is made up from”, you know?
It seems that a lot of the fears here have kind of the same core: a dislike of a thing exhibiting behavior outside of what it “should” do. It has been interesting to watch these fears morph over the years into general unease, then curiosity, then into fascination. He loves discovering hidden things and figuring out how things work. He especially loves to fix broken things and to create new things from old.
He still needs to be told now and then that “don’t worry, the good guys win” (cool!) or “that’s why pencils have erasers” (he smiles at that) or “You won’t fall out of the roller coaster” (stares at you as if to say that your point, while probably valid, is totally, totally irrelevant).
Meh. You can’t win them all, I guess.
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