The Scary Movie

We don’t need horror films in this house to have a child run screaming from the room.  Any given show or movie has a scary scene, especially those awful Pixar films.  Buzz Lightyear?  Screaming.  The cow-like tractors in Cars?  Frantic, panicked howling.

Of course, it’s not just the evil geniuses at Pixar who set the child into a tizzy.  Plex, the magic robot on Yo Gabba Gabba, Stepney the train on Thomas and Friends, any random dinosaur, shark, fuzzy bunny or monkey can be evil on any given day.  And if there’s any sort of menacing music… well, forget that.

Jack jumps up, belts from the room, runs around shrieking until we shut it off.  Of course, as this gets old super quick (and the other kids would kind of like to enjoy a complete show now and again), we often refuse.  He’ll then stop, and peek around the corner and watch from there.  Evidently the wall is a good buffer from the horrible Curious George or Elmo.  Occasionally he’ll make it back to the couch, but only grudgingly.

This behavior is pretty much an everyday occurance around here.  Unless Jack is really tired (which seems to really exacerbate things for him), it’s almost a game we play.  Let’s see how long we can watch *this* show before we have to switch to another one.  Kiddie TV roulette.

When it’s really bad, he asks to watch The Rachel Maddow show or Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

There’s always a silver lining.

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Is your child afraid of something really silly?  What crazy things have you done to accomodate them or work around it?