Trying to banish a bug fear

We are all afraid of something, whether it is the dark when we are children or spiders as an adult. As an adult, I know it is fruitless to be scared of imaginary things, but even I sometimes think I hear the Boogey Man when I am alone.

I was never one of those children who had nightmares when I was small. I had a few -- everyone does -- but nothing that really stood out to make me remember it years later as an adult. My sister had terrible nightmares of vampires when she was little. I always felt so bad for her. She would wake up almost every night and cry that the vampires were going to suck her blood. After a few endless months of this, my mom would just yell out, "Pray for Jesus to make the vampires go away." I still smile when I think of this and I can still hear Kelly's little 5-year-old self praying, "Please Jesus, make the scary bloodsucking vampires go away!"

Now that I am a mom, I can understand my mother's frustration with having to deal with the same thing over and over again, night after night. Kelly never even saw a movie or book with vampires in it until she was a teen, and yet she was terrified.

How do you help your child overcome their fear when they are terrified of an ordinary, everyday thing? Cooper is scared of bugs. It started out as nothing. He could spot a bug across the room as small as a tack. We would say, "Eww gross bug! Good job!" and that was that. Somewhere along the line his detective skills turned into a fear.

One day at the grandparents' house Coop wanted to "hunt" for bugs. The imaginary hunting turned into real hunting when rubber bugs came into play, and the hunting turned into bug squashing until one night Coop woke up screaming. Max and I both ran into his room to find him sitting up in bed bawling that the "buggies" were going to get him. I told him there were no bugs and he was fine, but he didn't sleep again the rest of the night -- and neither did I.

I brushed it off as just a nightmare and figured he would be fine the next night. I was wrong, as we continued to have the same nightmare over and over again, night after night. It was so bad that he would scratch his legs and talk in his sleep about bugs getting him.

We stopped bug hunting with rubber bugs, and when that didn't work we stopped "hunting" altogether. We don't mention bugs or point out the really cool ones anymore. At our house, bugs is the new four-letter word that you just don't say.

It has gotten a little better since we got all five of the grandparents on board with us and the no-bugs rule. The nightmares are a lot further apart now and we will sometimes go a week without one. But the underlying fear is still there.

As a mom, I just worry that this irrational fear will somehow weigh him down. All I can do is wait and see if we get over this childhood fear, or if he grows up to be an entomophobic.

As usual, I am always up for suggestions and mommy stories of your own children's fears. Look up Baby Steps on Facebook and leave me a message!

Kristen Pind, a native of small-town Gower, Mo., came to Southeast Missouri State University with big dreams of being the next Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer. She never thought that by age 25, she'd be married with a baby and living in Cape Girardeau. Keep up with Kristen's adventures as a first-time mom -- one who's still a girl trying to figure out how her own life fits together. Turns out, she's living a dream she never knew she had, and loving every minute of it. Kristen invites moms of all types to find her "Baby Steps" page on Facebook.