Toddler is scared of thunder

[Anonymous]

DS is 3 and goes to bed at 7:30 just fine… except when there is a thunderstorm. He is generally really outgoing and brave but thunder legit terrifies him. The evening summer thunderstorms are really throwing us off. Any advice on how we can help him cope?

We’ve tried:
- Hug teddy bear if you feel scared and get cozy in the blankets
- read books about being scared in thunderstorms
- read books about clouds/rain/etc. so we can talk about what happens
- made a raincloud art and hung it by his bed to look at (teacher’s idea)
- DH sits in the chair in his bedroom
- listening to something during the storm (podcast)

Last week’s storm I slept on the floor in his room for two hours. He’s also ended up in bed with us twice.

Help me help him!

[Anonymous]

I hated thunderstorms too when I was a little child. My kids were scared too. Seems normal?

[Anonymous]

Noise machine?

[Anonymous]

Tbh I just let my 2.5yo sleep with me if there’s a thunderstorm. I love them so I talk about that but they’re startling and she has a short fuse when tired. She has no problem falling asleep in my lap though.

[Anonymous]

I don’t know if this is any help at all, but my Mom used to call lightning and thunder “God’d fireworks”. We’d sit together and watch the show out the window.

[Anonymous]

A Disney movie. That's the only thing that helped my 3yo. She eventually outgrew it.

[Anonymous]

Thundershirt.

[Anonymous]

OP here. He can’t really sleep with us as an option because we have a newborn in our room as well.

[Anonymous]

Also because it takes him foreverrrrr to get settled in our bed because we never cosleep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also because it takes him foreverrrrr to get settled in our bed because we never cosleep.

Mat on the floor?

[Anonymous]

I clicked on their forum by accident since my kids are older but my oldest was like this. It wasn’t easy and he was really scared. When the storms were the worst, we ended up letting him stay up later than normal and look at books or sit with us if we were up. There was no way he was going to sleep.

He’s in high school now and still really doesn’t like storms. He’s not a terrified toddler anymore but he will turn on his bedroom light and he knows watches YouTube while it passes. Every now and then he will come and get us to let us know a warning went off and he thinks it’s best we all go to the basement. That’s rare and he’s calm about it, but really trying to protect the family.

Good luck! It’s hard to see the little ones scared when you are sleep deprived too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I clicked on their forum by accident since my kids are older but my oldest was like this. It wasn’t easy and he was really scared. When the storms were the worst, we ended up letting him stay up later than normal and look at books or sit with us if we were up. There was no way he was going to sleep.

He’s in high school now and still really doesn’t like storms. He’s not a terrified toddler anymore but he will turn on his bedroom light and he knows watches YouTube while it passes. Every now and then he will come and get us to let us know a warning went off and he thinks it’s best we all go to the basement. That’s rare and he’s calm about it, but really trying to protect the family.

Good luck! It’s hard to see the little ones scared when you are sleep deprived too.

this is so sweet!!

[Anonymous]

Hope everyone’s toddler did okay with the fireworks last night. (Mine came to sleep with me hence why I thought of this.)