Could the ELMO DVD have caused this reaction?

[Khyan & Sahria's mum]

Sahria has always been great to put down to sleep. Without any training I have always been able to pop her in the cot and say goodnight and she lies there until she falls asleep. Even after a couple of days in hospital after her op when she insisted on sleep directly on top of me, as soon as we got home she was back in her bed and falling asleep independantly.

This afternoon she was watching an elmo dvd while I was getting her lunch ready and all of a sudden she jumped up crying and ran to me in the kitchen and was really scared  I walked back to the tv with her in my arms and she was burying her head in my arm pit and peeking out occasionally. I skipped back to the part that scared her to find out what it was and it happened to be a puppet wolf practicing blowing (like the 3 little pigs) and he blew too hard and Prairie blew away and when she came back her hair was all messed up.

Anyway she got over it but when I went to put her down to sleep about 20 mins later, she was hysterical if I left the room and I mean HYSTERICAL ! In the end I sat in with her till she fell asleep and she has been asleep for 2 hours at the moment.

Do you think that wolf would be the reason behind it ? I want to be there for her but I don't want to set up a new prop, so what should I do ? I realise it might be a one off and will try normal routine tonight but incase it doesn't work I'd like to have a plan of some sort

What do you think ?

[Hester]

She is your one year old daughter right? This is a time when they start feeling scared. So yes this could have caused it. Sometimes things that are quite normal to us can scare them like crazy. I don't think that it's very worrisome to give her the little extra attention that she might need now. In fact I think if you don't give it to her, you'll have bigger sleep problems down the road, because her bed is not a safe place anymore. Do try to encourage independent sleep though, try rubbing her back or wi/wo. Maybe put a night light on, or leave the door open and do some cleaning or tidying up so she can hear you and knows you're not far away. It will probably soon pass. It might even be this one time that she needed extra hugs...

(((hugs))) to you!

Hester

[andibig]

I'd be really tempted to say that it was the DVD .Until the age of 3 or usually older LOs have a difficult time separating fiction from reality.
Sasha once watched something on the telly about halloween (dora the explorer BTW) and kept saying she was scared of the monsters.and i mean scared.so I said to her make sound like monsters which basically means pulling very funny faces etc (fortunately DD has a very good sense of humour ).

So personally i think in a couple of days if not sooner she will be fine and just needs a little extra settling.

HTH