Tell me a Scary Story

“I don’t want to go to bed, I’m scared of…”

Even the bravest of children by day can be reduced to a quivering wreck come bedtime by a few lines of a misheard story that their best friend’s cousin’s teammate’s brother swears is true because it happened to a friend of his sister.  

The perennial classic, Bloody Mary, is STILL doing the rounds – stare into a mirror at midnight while chanting her name and you’ll see the face of your future spouse, the grim reaper or (depending on which version is currently in vogue) the devil himself staring back at you.  Chilling stuff I’m sure you agree.  Or how about the 3am tale?  In its many incarnations it’s either a terrible sign to be awake (or asleep depending on which version your friend is telling you) at 3am or something truly terrible will happen to you (or your parents, or brother, or…).  Or the escaped axe murderer from Bodmin Jail, or the Ghost of Polstain Road?

Some of these stories have been in circulation longer than most of us have been alive.  So what can we do as adults when we’re tired and our child is bordering on hysterics and threatening never to sleep again?

1. Acknowledge their fears.  It may seem silly or trivial to us, but to them it is a very real feeling and not something to be taken lightly.
2. Reassure them that they have done the right thing by talking to you – building and reinforcing the trust between you is essential now as they need to feel that they can come to you with anything which might be on their mind.
3. Agree that it is a scary story –  but it is just that: a story told to scare people.  Discuss the reasons that people may want to tell such tales (older people find them exciting because they know that it is not true and it can be fun to be scared a little bit – like going down the demon drop at Flambards!)
4. Reassure them that there is nothing wrong with being scared but that you are there to help them take control of their fears.
5. Tell the school – if someone has told them the story, you can be sure that they will have told other children too.  Having their teacher and their parents preaching the same message is incredibly reassuring for children and will hopefully save other children and parents from the same nighttime ordeal.