brigid | Dinosaurus! (Reply)

We were at Toys “R” Us the other day (and can I just say that after literally YEARS of seeing an online friend refer to “tru” and “bru” in her bog and assuming they were, like, special Florida stores (she lives in Florida) that we don’t have up here, I finally realized that “tru” is “Toys ‘R’ Us” and “bru” is “Babies ‘R’ Us.” I’m pretty quick, huh?) and Niko cringed— cringed– from a toy dinosaur. Like, pulled his hands up against his chest, made a Very Worried Face, and tilted his entire body as far away from it as he could. Then he made a small worried noise. He started crying when Nesko picked the dinosaur up and held it close to him. He repeated this cringing every time we came close to a dinosaur or lizard toy or picture.

We were reading I Love You Stinky Face (and this is apparently part of a series? Neat! Did not know that.) which is one of Niko’s favorite books, and when we got to the part where the “Terrible Meat Eating Dinosaur” appears, Niko made a distressed noise and cringed away from the book.

What!!!

We decided to try and desensitize him to his fear, which involved demonstrating touching the dinosaur in the book and seeing that it didn’t hurt him to touch it, reading that book a lot, buying him (on sale or from thrift stores) clothing with dinosaurs/alligators/lizards/etc on it, buying him a book about dinosaurs (and oh, I hunted for WEEKS for the right book…My First Dinosaur Board Book fit the bill nicely), and obtaining a plastic T-Rex that walks when you wind it up. We sometimes watch (ugh) Dinosaur Train. One of Nesko’s Co-Workers loaned him a Disney movie about Dinosaurs (called, aptly enough, “Dinosaur”) and we watched it together.

We encouraged him to be close to these items, touch them, etc. For a while, he would pat the Terrible Meat Eating Dinosaur every time we read “Stinky Face.” We’d wind up the T-Rex and he’d watch wide-eyed, running away a few paces if it came close to him or was pointed in his general direction and putting toys/blocks/cars in its way.

And now he’s totally over his fear of dinosaurs, it seems. He runs around with the T-Rex, tries to wind it up, carries it in his hands and kisses it and pats its head. He likes reading the dinosaur book and points out mouths and eyes and other things he’s interested in.

My fear, now, is that he will develop a terrible fear of puppies or chocolate or something next. OH NO MAMA I MUST EAT THIS ENTIRE PACKAGE OF ROLLOS TO OVERCOME MY FEAR OF CHOCOLATE AND THINGS THAT TASTE GOOD. A friend of mine has started claiming that she’s extremely afraid of money and I need to help her work through this.

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