I think we all grew up with some kind of monster under the bed. You know — the ones that frightened you into terrifying thoughts and sleepless nights. This story is totally relatable to us, because (sorry to embarrass her) Becca didn’t sleep through the night until she was at least 10. She had night terrors that left her in tears, frightened, screaming, panicked, and any other terrified word I can come up with. The sound of her flying up the stairs to my room was fairly similar to that of a herd of stampeding elephants. We understand the plight of this mom who sent us her story:
“My youngest kid has suffered from nightmares for years. I’ll call him Awesome cuz that’s his nickname. He’s 8. I don’t know if it is because I (his mom) am fighting stage 4 cancer (for 4 years) so he was introduced to death and fear at a young age, or if it’s because he has 4 older siblings that talk about stuff that he doesn’t understand completely. Like burglars.
We were making progress until he was up with a nightmare when the earthquake hit Utah in March. Another fear popped up.
Usually my husband had to sit outside his room till he fell asleep. And he would wake up many times a night saying he had a bad dream. Even if Awesome was able to get himself back to sleep without waking me, he would talk about his bad dreams all the time.
Then I bought a monster for each of my kids and myself and let him pick. He picked Stomp’d because he looked the coolest (to him), and he sets him on his bed each night when he gets ready to sleep.
Guess what! Since then, Awesome has had no nightmares, no bad dreams. Thanks to OurMonsters for this great idea! I love that we can take something hard in life and turn it into something that helps both us and others.”
