Fears at four

Since we were talking in the comment section on the last post about preschoolers and fear, I thought it was worth mentioning my exchanges with Edith tonight after bedtime. Tom and I have been told that four is the age of fears, as children start to be aware of the many things that can go wrong. It certainly seems an apt description of Edith, who in the last year has expressed all sorts of anxieties that weren't on the radar screen before.

At the same time, we are frequently reminded that her fearfulness, like that in a dream, doesn't track predictably with what adults would expect to be frightening.

Like tonight. A few minutes after I'd put her to bed under her canopy listening to the Odyssey on CD, she called me back in.

"I heard a noise," she said. "Like a rustling that won't go away." I'd noticed that noise when putting her to bed and identified it as the noise made by air from the vent blowing her trash-can liner. I moved the trashcan, and the noise stopped.

"Oh," she said in relief. "I thought it was maybe the floor starting to catch on fire."

I left, but a few minutes later she called again. I asked what it was this time.

"I wish you wouldn't close my canopy that way, so that it looks like a mountain," she complained. I tried to figure out what she meant and saw that she was pointing to the "V" made by the negative space between the two edges of the canopy curtain. I pulled the edges together more tightly, so the gauze completely surrounded her with no gaps.

"Is that better?" I asked.

She nodded, snuggling down into the blankets once more. "When you close it like a mountain, it reminds me of a volcano, and it makes me think a volcano might erupt in my room." Then suddenly she sat up again, looked around her at the gauzy canopy, and asked with evident satisfaction, "You know what it reminds me of now?" I couldn't guess. "It's like being in the Land of the Dead! You see why? Like, the mist all around Odysseus. Cool. I'm sleeping in the Land of the Dead."

And she lay down with a smile and closed her eyes.