How To Traumatise Your Child

For Kalani's birthday I brought him (what I thought was) a great book.  Richard Scarry's Best Nursery Tales Ever.

"Great choice" I thought, "Kalani doesn't really know any of the classic nursery stories, this book will cover all of them in one swoop. I'm an awesome parent *smug smug smug*".

So we started to read the stories.

Goldilocks and the 3 Bears  

No problem.

The 3 Little Pigs  

Erm - slight problem.  The big bad wolf is EATING the pigs.  That's a little bit scary.

Little Red Riding Hood

Bigger problem.  The big bad wolf eats the grandmother.  But not to worry.  The woodcutter kills the wolf by CUTTING HIM OPEN (!!!), and, happy times, the grandmother is fine and jumps out of the massacred wolf carcass.

What?  What?  What?

There's a lot of eating people and cutting up animals while they're alive and generally gruesome goings on.

Anyway, Kalani didn't seem to affected.... or so I thought.

Then, about 3 weeks ago, he started to follow me around everywhere.  If I went to the bathroom, he had to come too.  If we were downstairs and I had to run upstairs to fetch something, he had to come with me.  He now won't even go to the bathroom by himself.  

Odd.

Well, not really.  We asked him what was wrong, and it turns out that he's afraid that the Big Bad Wolf is going to come and eat him.

Oops.  Not such an awesome parent after all.  I've turned my child from an independent small human, into a quivering, frightened limpet.

So, we've had to start adopting some Anti-Wolf strategies in the house.

1. Both cats have been sent to 'Defend The House Against Wolves' School.
2. Kalani has just been given a 'Wolf-Defense-Cape' (aka. bath towel) by a friend.
3. Dan is going to put out some Wolf Traps around the house, just in case the BBW gets past the Cat & Towel defense team.

But Kalani is still very afraid, and I think it might just be one of those things that hopefully passes with time.  Otherwise we'll have to move house! 

So what's the moral of this story?  Just when you think you've got this parenting lark nailed, you screw it up.  

Yours Truly

Not-So-Smug-Now