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It would appear that our toddler Little Miss has developed a series of phobias and fears already in he short, but ever so eventful life.

They range from the endearingly cute ones, such as her current thing about doggie poo.

After a recent incident where toddler and Wife went out to explore the area around the house (complete with backpack, explorer hat and torch) and managed to stand in some dog poo on the nature strip out the front a phobia has been born. Now whenever Little Miss is wandering around grassland, the front lawn, or a park, she will occasionally stop, drink in her surrounds and exclaim as a warning to the unseen others around her - “Watch out for the doggiieeee pooooooo!!’

Wow that last attempt at putting the spoken language onto paper displays just how hard it can be to adequately translate toddler into a written format while still maintaining the inflection, the subtext, and the adorable cuteness.

Digression over.

So that is one of the cute phobias - an almost unhealthy obsession with all things dog excrement related and the horrible fate that may befall us all if we happen to stand in it.

On the not so cute phobia extreme side of the ledger there is her car phobia. There was an incident after daycare where she broke out of Wife’s grip and ran head first towards the road only to be tackled and given a quite vocal (and well deserved) lecture on how a car hitting her would make her cry ‘really big tears’. This incident followed a few similar incidents where she had taken off towards the road so this was the final straw. Now we are at a point where Little Miss can at times freze when walking down a footpath if there are lots of cars on the street and demand to be carried because she has to ‘watch out for the cars’.

I guess the power of seeing you Mum really scared and upset should not be underestimated when it comes to toddlers

In the mid-range we now have a mini ‘where is my Snugzee‘ phobia developing of late. The last couple of nights after daycare Little Miss has been keeping a very close eye on her Snugzees and their whereabouts. She even woke two nights in a row in tears because she couldn’t find them in her bed. A situation probably not helped by the fact that she sleeps with a giant Elmo, a Rat in the Hat doll, purple bear, Jamilla and various other favored soft toys that are on a high rotation in and out of her butterfly bed.

After having to spend the night also curled up with her in the butterfly bed (which made for an interesting nights sleep and an even more interesting day spent trying not to fall asleep in negotiations) trying to reassure her that nothing would go missing we had to try and work out what was going on.

The next night when she got into bed and was getting upset and demanding that she not be left alone we sat down and tried to work out what was happening. In the end we started to play with Baby Good - her very own baby doll - and trying to coax out of her what was upsetting her in her room.

We tried all the old tricks like the ‘Scarey go away spray’ (a spray bottle of water that she has sprayed on things to make them not scarey any more - surisingly effective), having Big Ted perched next to the bed to protect her etc. But to no avail.

Eventually Wife got her to admit there was an issue through getting her to squeeze her hand for yes or no when asked some questions while wife guessed at possible problems. For a toddler who won’t shut up normally she gets very very introverted bordering on being mute when it comes to telling us what is bothering her. So in the end she admitted there was an issue, but that she would only tell it to Daddy.

Got to say that made me feel like the ‘big Daddy protector of his little girl’ that we would all like to see ourselves as. Not sure if Wife was as impressed though

So after some more playing she admitted that one of her friends at childcare had stolen her snugzeez (for a second time) and that she if she left them ‘they might go away and then I will cry really really big tears and be very sad’.

So I had to choke back the urge to throttle another toddler and instead we went through all the things she should do:

1. Ask for them back

2. Tell one of the carers if they weren’t instantly returned.
 
3. Tell Mummy or Daddy and we will get them for her.

4. I promised to teach her how to kick Toddler butt if required, but Wife seems to think this is a bad idea.

We also added additional name tags to them, reassured her that we would always make sure they were in her bag before coming home etc. Basically all the reassurance things we could thing of at the time.

So far tonight she has remained asleep with no tears so hopefully it has worked, but one thing is for sure Snugzees are not being let out of her sight for love nor money at the moment.

So it is official, we have one highly strung toddler who has a number of little fears and phobias to slowly work through (I didn’t even go through swings, flies, needing a singlet on, showers, or the dreaded potty!). But we are working through them as they arise.

I have slowly reconciled myself to the fact that Little Miss is going to take after Wife in such things and go through life on the timid side when it comes to moving out of her comfort zone. I guess our role now is to give her some coping mechanisms so she doesn’t end up paralysed by a series of minor fears.

Well that and teaching her how to kick ass when required