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- No Evil Sheep
No Evil Sheep
- By Sarah de Souza
- Published 03/25/2008
- Family Life , Children , Humor
-
Rating:
Sarah de Souza
I am a person who simply enjoys writing, so here I am! I have a dry sense of humor that I'd like to see if I can express with the written word as well, so I suppose this is a kind of personal experiment for me. Leave comments! Check my other stuff out at www.sarahdesouza.com.
View all articles by Sarah de Souza
Yes, that's been the mantra at our house this past week. Chalk it up as parenting challenge #256 (or somewhere thereabouts): dealing with nighttime monsters.
I've done my best to keep my kids away from scary influences, ever since I learned my lesson the hard way: a horrible relapse of bedwetting when my oldest was 9. He had almost stopped, but went back up to several times a week for about six months!! The cause? Ghost stories he heard on a school camping trip. (And they were told by one of the parents!) Every now and then some scary image gets past the radar though. Even on the kids cartoon channels PG-13 level movie ads show up from time to time and a strategically placed pair of sharp teeth can mean nothing but trouble when all I want to be doing is getting some sleep!
Halloween was a bad time for us. We certainly didn't seek out the scary stuff, but it's everywhere anyway. Something must have affected my daughter because she was spending a lot of nights slipping into bed with me and my husband after that–an occurrence my husband was none too thrilled about.
When weeks of just hoping it would die out and go away turned into months, I realized it was time to take action. My daughter was having a particularly bad night where she didn't event want to start out in her own bed, so I said, "All right, let's chase these monsters out!" So we did. I took everything out from under the bed (where else do monsters hide, after all?) spied a small one in the corner, and chased it clear out to the street. I even yelled at it to stay the heck out for emphasis. After that my daughter caught a few in her "net" and dumped them outside as well. She seemed to feel a little better but not 100% yet. Scrambling for ideas, I happened upon this one: Monster Spray. Okay, so I should have
named it Anti-Monster Spray. I was pressed for time! I went to the laundry room, grabbed some Febreze, and returned to her room armed. We sprayed everywhere to kill them off and keep them out (kind of like pest control), and I let her keep it next to her bed when she slept so that if she even sensed monsters nearby she could spray in the air and fend them off. I'm thrilled to say this seems to have worked. Until the arrival of the evil sheep...
She was doing really well–no more nightmares and sleeping in her own bed–then one day she started talking about this evil sheep. She couldn't tell me a lot; the sheep had chased me and her in a bad dream and it had rather disturbing eyebrows. When I asked the first time if it had sharp teeth the answer was no, but that was five days ago and I guess they've gotten sharp since then.
This time we made signs. It was her idea. I wrote No Evil Sheep on three pieces of paper and she, her little brother and I all drew fluffy sheep in big NO circles with the crossbar. Then we hung them on all the bedroom doors. This kept them out of the bedrooms, but I guess he could still get into the family room because I awoke to her wailing in her bedroom after seeing him there the other night. She'd wanted to come to our bedroom, but the evil sheep had been standing in the way. When she was more coherent the next day, I let her spray the family room with Monster Spray (at this point I had decided the sheep was definitely a monster) and that seems to have done the trick. I certainly hope it has. Only time will really tell. I still don't know where a monster as sheep came from.
If there's any drawback to my plan it's when I want to use the Monster Spray for some mundane purpose. I usually just say that there's a "monster" odor to be taken care of if my daughter asks, and that satisfies her. I don't think she's going to argue with me about something that will keep the monsters out.
I've done my best to keep my kids away from scary influences, ever since I learned my lesson the hard way: a horrible relapse of bedwetting when my oldest was 9. He had almost stopped, but went back up to several times a week for about six months!! The cause? Ghost stories he heard on a school camping trip. (And they were told by one of the parents!) Every now and then some scary image gets past the radar though. Even on the kids cartoon channels PG-13 level movie ads show up from time to time and a strategically placed pair of sharp teeth can mean nothing but trouble when all I want to be doing is getting some sleep!
Halloween was a bad time for us. We certainly didn't seek out the scary stuff, but it's everywhere anyway. Something must have affected my daughter because she was spending a lot of nights slipping into bed with me and my husband after that–an occurrence my husband was none too thrilled about.
When weeks of just hoping it would die out and go away turned into months, I realized it was time to take action. My daughter was having a particularly bad night where she didn't event want to start out in her own bed, so I said, "All right, let's chase these monsters out!" So we did. I took everything out from under the bed (where else do monsters hide, after all?) spied a small one in the corner, and chased it clear out to the street. I even yelled at it to stay the heck out for emphasis. After that my daughter caught a few in her "net" and dumped them outside as well. She seemed to feel a little better but not 100% yet. Scrambling for ideas, I happened upon this one: Monster Spray. Okay, so I should have
She was doing really well–no more nightmares and sleeping in her own bed–then one day she started talking about this evil sheep. She couldn't tell me a lot; the sheep had chased me and her in a bad dream and it had rather disturbing eyebrows. When I asked the first time if it had sharp teeth the answer was no, but that was five days ago and I guess they've gotten sharp since then.
This time we made signs. It was her idea. I wrote No Evil Sheep on three pieces of paper and she, her little brother and I all drew fluffy sheep in big NO circles with the crossbar. Then we hung them on all the bedroom doors. This kept them out of the bedrooms, but I guess he could still get into the family room because I awoke to her wailing in her bedroom after seeing him there the other night. She'd wanted to come to our bedroom, but the evil sheep had been standing in the way. When she was more coherent the next day, I let her spray the family room with Monster Spray (at this point I had decided the sheep was definitely a monster) and that seems to have done the trick. I certainly hope it has. Only time will really tell. I still don't know where a monster as sheep came from.
If there's any drawback to my plan it's when I want to use the Monster Spray for some mundane purpose. I usually just say that there's a "monster" odor to be taken care of if my daughter asks, and that satisfies her. I don't think she's going to argue with me about something that will keep the monsters out.
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