Along with all these things, he is becoming more aware of his surroundings, a little hyper-aware. Dark rooms, being outside when it is dark, and being alone in the dark are his short list of frightening things. It officially became apparent the other night when he began crying when I left him in his room to read (part of our regular nightly routine for months). I came into his room to see him crying and hiding his head under his pillow. All he could tell me was there was "somthing scary" while looking toward a back wall. He had already had a nightlight in his room. So I added another, with no luck calming him down without me in there. I eventually had to lay in his bed with him to get him to fall asleep.
I evoked ideas to help remedy the situation from friends on Facebook. There were a few suggestions- all entailed using something to get rid of the monsters before we went to bed. While the ideas were good, I didn't quite feel like that would solve the problem. There was something that he could see that was scaring him- I think the shadows on the walls. We proceeded to remove all things on the wall and any object that was not furniture or books. Any of his shows he likes to watch that have a possible scary element to them, were deleted from the DVR. There were still shadows on the wall, from the furniture and curtains, produced from the nightlight plugged in a couple feet off the floor. So I got the idea to replace the current light switch for the room light with a dimmer, so that any shadows produced would be produced on the floor or out of his visual field from his bed.
While his new fear of the dark is not completely remedied, I have been able to leave him in his room to let him read in bed before going to sleep. He continues to ask me to lay on his floor while he falls asleep, but I wonder if it is more to have the company rather that because there is "something scary." Let's hope we can continue to help him get over this new fear!
