Love, Giant Cricket

There comes a time in every caregivers life when they have to deal with the inevitable (and often irrational) fright of a child. Garbage Trucks (Ga-Hup!), Vacuum Cleaners, Storms, Fireworks, Weird photoshopped pictures of aye-aye owls... I could go on for ages about those horrible and scary things that terrify Bratling. The newest trend has leaned towards insects, one in particular will send my dear whelp into fits of terror induced shrieks (my ears shall never recover). Crickets.



Yes, one of the most harmless bugs we have around here and she screams at even the idea that they are near her. I know what must be done. I must nip this fear in the bud just as I did for the other grubby, giant bugs of the past.

Yes there was another bug she feared. They don't come around very often: the Cicada

Yes yes messy downstairs, I didn't finish cleaning it at that point.

Bratling didn't know what to think of those either, heck, she was downright scared of those big, loud bugs that had swarmed our suburbs. Needless to say before they were all gone I took the liberty to indoctrenate Whelp that those harmless giants were cool. Which they are.


See? happy kid.

I'm used to these quirky frights by now. Every new one that pops up I get rid of it in a process that reminds me of whack-a-mole. Nail one, another pops up. Every time I do so however, it is always in the insanest, most unorthodox ways. Because normal coping skills are boring.

For the vacuum I turned it on and popped that sucking nozzle right on the kid. Upon seeing that she wasn't going to get "eaten" she was cool with it from then on. The Aye-aye owl? Printed up a picture of it, hung it up in plain view of her bed and let Bratling take her course. Sure enough, she was dragging that picture around up until she got it just too messy to keep (I so should have saved that picture, darn it.). I'm taking the same route with the crickets. I found the biggest, groadiest, fattest, grubby cricket picture I could find. Printed it, autographed it "Giant Cricket", and tossed it in the front of her backpack for Kindergarten. Now if I write a post about a teacher kicking me in my nonexistent nads, you'll know why.

I'm going to be printing out more and repeating the process until crickets don't bug her anymore, and yes; that pun was intentional. :P