Imaginary Bogeyman

My 3year old son started coming to me at night saying there were monsters in his room. I gave him a spaghetti serving spoon (one of those ones that looks like a claw) took it to his room waved it about and said "go away monsters we don't want you here" and told him that now they were gone. NO monsters can stand up to the monster stick! Now he keeps it by his bed and any time he feels there are monsters he can wave it about. Sounds crazy I know but it works for him! HTH

Try this, lay down with him. If he starts saying he's scared, ask him what it is. Have him point to it or you point around. We had this with my 3 year old and turned out it was a huge dragon fly that was hanging on her wall. We took it down and no problems after that.

get a clear spray bottle put some water in it with some glitter and confetti pieces..get a black sharpie or colored ones and label the bottle no more boogeyman spray or something and you and him go spray it all around his room ..and leave it by his bed at night..so if he gets scared he can spray it at the boogeyman :)

We had the same problem with my daughter a few months ago. She came running out of her room at about 2am saying that ghosts were coming through her wall to get her and that they went through her door into the hall. She was about 2 1/2 at the time and this is exactly what she told us. I put a post on here and got alot of great advice. We told her that every time that she goes into her room to say very loudly "GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" For the first few days she was afraid to go in there but she would say that and then play in there for hours. Turns out that my idiot neighbors were hitting the wall and she would think that it was a ghost coming to get her. We live in a apartment that has very thin walls. We can here everything. So we explained to her that it was the older kids hitting the wall and to tell them to knock it off! She felt much better after that. We sometimes leave her TV on for background noise. Once in a great while she will scream and say "ghost coming" and we tell her to tell them "GET OUT OF MY ROOM!" and then she is fine. So try that. If it continues then I would research the house and have a priest come in to bless the house. Good Luck!

2-3 year olds... developmentally.... develop "fears".... whether that be ambiguous or specific. It is developmental based. Their cognition and imaginations... are changing... becoming more so.
They also can have night-mares at this age....

Our kids, have flashlights in bed with them.
And any loveys.
We also, sympathize with them... and we check things in their room... to help comfort them and 'show' them... that all is alright.

Sometimes, they are simply afraid of "shadows" on the walls, from the street lights outside or even the moon. That is how my daughter was. She even was afraid of the wind, making noises outside....

Can he say anything or talk yet????

It is so hard to know what your son is experiencing and what will comfort him. At the risk of sounding a little crazy, I will say that there is a whole spiritual side of things that we often don't see. I know my son started to have fears of what he calls "The Creeper" around 4 yrs. old. So when we put him to bed at night, we would pray and ask the Lord to guard his thoughts and guard his dreams against the creeper and any other bad thoughts or dreams. This and we also talked about how God is bigger than "The Creeper" or anything else and all he had to do was pray and trust in the Lord when he feels scared. I hope this helps in some way.

My son started to be scared around that age too. We put a nightlight in his room, but his room was pretty large and he said the other side was too dark and he was scared of that, so now he has 2 nightlights in his room and a flashlight on his night table.
The heat in our house tends to make a lot of noise and that used to scare him as well. Good luck!

I had a similar situation with my son. Turns out we had a ghost. Seriously. We found out as we were moving out that a previous owner had died unexpectedly in the home. He wasn't a nice man and didn't like kids. He used to torment my son. Because he was so young and had speech issues, he couldn't verbalize to us what was going on. When he finally did, he explained that this bad ghost who smelled of cigarette smoke used to torment him. You guessed it -- the man who died was a heavy cigarette smoker! It may not be imaginery like you think. We thought the same thing too and wondered why he only slept AWAY from our house. We even had a priest come in and spread holy water and say prayers in every room (before we knew it was a ghost) -- we didn't know what else to do. Now I would find a Feng Sui person to come in and 'smudge' the house and 'clear it' of any unwanted spirits. No, I'm not crazy. If this didn't happen to us, I would call me crazy too! good luck.

Your boy is staying as close to you as possible, for safety's sake, in his little mind. When one of my four children expressed bedtime fear, I would lie down next to that little one until he or she fell asleep. Night after night I would do this, ( it only takes a few minutes out of your life, really, and they are little for such a short time,) until they could fall asleep on their own.
I would work up to that, saying, "I'll be back in five minutes, I just want to check on ..." I would come back in five minutes, again and again, until my little one fell asleep. Be sure to let him shut his door, if that makes him feel better, but go into his room and do something fun with him, at some point during the day. At night, be sure to use a good night light!
Remember, he won't go to college asking for you to sleep with him, so don't be afraid when others tell you that you are setting him up for disaster, loss of independence, ability to rely on himself, etc. You are NOT! You are meeting his need for safety and security.
Eventually he will feel safe, and grow up just fine, and you will be glad you comforted him when you look back on his sweet babyhood!
Love,
L. M

Dear R., This is a stage! Try a nightlight and also go around and look under the bed in the closet and show him there is nothing scary..... this will pass. Do your best mommy. Grandma Mary

Monster away spray works great in these situations. You get a scent of room freshener that you normally don't use in the house and label it as 'Monster away spray' complete with a picture of a monster running out of the house. You explain to your child that the spray will get rid of any unwanted things in his room and then spray away. The scent stays a long time so he'll be able to go to sleep knowing nothing is there to get him.

It worked when my son was a little one.