Saturday 20 June 2009

11

Anxiety disorder? What anxiety disorder?

A couple of weeks ago when I was working at a fair, Steven had the kids at his parents and they raided the loft for some of Steven's old books and toys. And Jamie came home with this:



'Great,' I thought, 'Just what a kid with anxiety needs'. The same kid that's obsessed with The Bear. That's mighty afraid of The Bear. That's convinced his sister to obsess about The Bear. That has to keep all of the doors in the house closed at all times, because of The Bear. And not this bear:


This one:
From Teletubbies. I've been pretty dismissive of his fear of The Bear, but when looking for a picture there were hundreds, nay thousands, of people who said The Bear freaked them right out. If you don't believe me, check out this video:



Anyway, back to He-Man... I was convinced that Skeletor would be too much for his angst-ridden little mind to cope with. What I didn't appreciate, though, is that to a three year old a skeleton is not inherently scary. In fact, he's really rather delightful.


'He's smiling! He's happy!'


'He's waving! At his friends!'


'He's using the computer! Like Jamie!'


'He's peeking in the window! He thinks it's funny!'

11 comments:

  1. could be worse. my son is buttonphobic. how many bears are there in your house? and how many buttons?

    what is worse (although easier to deal with at the time) is he didn't tell us until he'd left home - presumably cos I'm even scarier.

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  2. This post really made me laugh, just what I needed today, thanks! xxx

    (I am not saying that jamies bear phobia is funny btw - that bear is kinda freaky!)

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  3. My oldest HATED that bear. It does have something slightly freaky about it (not that the other teletubbies don't as well!) the way it just moves around on wheels.

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  4. I rather liked the bear-lion segment - mostly because the bear was voiced by Penelope Keith, so it gave me a good chance to practice my posh english lady voice and amuse my child at the same time "I'm the behr, I'm the behr...."

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  5. Complete flashback to my youth there...

    "By the powers of greyskull ... I have the power!!!!"

    boy*jelly used to freak out over a bit in the Teletubbies. It was a little man in the windows of a house wearing a tam-o-shanter on his head making quite weird noises.

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  6. I have bad memories of He-man. I had an awful hair-cut when I was about 7 and the boy that I really liked, decided that I looked like She-ra!! I was mortified.
    I bought Carebears and Super-ted for Jack and Lou to watch. Both really nice programs as I remember them, the kids were traumatised. It seems our kids are fed such safe and unscary things nowadays

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  7. Oh I hear you - Bradley is absolutely terrified of the teletubbies bear. We need to keep a recorded 'safe' episode on standby just in case the bear comes on, then do a quick swap!

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  8. Bring back Florence and Zebedee, Rhubarb and Custard, Crystal tips. Actually I used to be really scared by Mary Mungo and Midge gave me the heebe jeebies. No idea why.

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  9. I look back on the cartoons we used to watch and think they're a lot darker than anything around these days (of course I wonder about the sanity of folk who come up with programs like In the Night Garden).

    My kids love Duckula, Dungeons and Dragons and Mysterious Cities of Gold.

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  10. I love how kids minds work :)

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