The Thunder, It Rumbles

It seems like storming and thunder always happen when it's either naptime or bedtime. We never have thunder at say...dinnertime when she's awake anyway. Nope, it's always right when we were going to put her to bed. Tonight was a pretty spectacular storm.

As a kid I remember always being terrified of storms. In fact, that fear didn't totally go away until after my own child was born. Jane Yolen is right - one can't be afraid when one has someone to protect. And that is what I wanted for A-chan. Not protection exactly, but security. I didn't want her to be afraid of thunder, of bad weather. Children just are sometimes, I do understand that. But I also think that a lot of what children perceive about their world comes from the adults around them. If I were to suddenly react as if she ought to feel afraid, she will respond as she thinks I expect. (Don't worry, honey, it's just thunder, it can't hurt you.) On the other hand, if I treat the thunder as something interesting and enjoyable to listen to (wow, that one was really cool, what did you think of it?) - how would she react? Tonight we found out.

When I told her that thunder is the sound of clouds talking to each other she suddenly perked up and began asking questions rather than clinging to me. "When the thunder is really loud it's because the clouds are really excited about something and get loud just like you do when you're excited." I said. Within 30 seconds we had a discussion going about what the clouds might be excited about and wowing over each rumble. There was no need to soothe her at all. Here are a couple of the things that we came up with:

"The Clouds excited about DragonCon, they be purple jawas with A-chan and have pink jawa socks and feet."

"The clouds are excited about their birthday party and want a pink cake!"

At this point the discussion took a completely different path and birthday cakes became the subject. I talked about my plans for my birthday cake this year, said last year had flowers, and I thought this year it should be a star wars cake. I was then told that her cake should be SW and mine should have blue flowers on it, lol.

Overall I was excited about how well my strategy worked! And I was continually kicking myself over the fact that I should have gotten with it sooner and used the same type of tactic with the public restroom. But in that situation I did everything wrong that I could have and perhaps created the fear that she exhibited in the public toilet. (Luckily we're all past that and the public toilet isn't a trial anymore, she's okay with it!)