Bumps in the Night

Nighttime courage has always been an issue in our house. I don't know if this is the case in every family, but my kids are unmitigated chickens when it comes to occupying a room alone. Any room, really. But mostly a bedroom.

They each have a room of their own. It's not like we painted the walls black and pasted glow-in-he-dark eyes all over the place or anything. They are bright, cheery bedrooms, as kids' rooms are wont to be - complete with an overhead light casting approximately 90 zillion candlepower, plus a fairly respectable nightlight that you can pretty much read by, if you're not planning on tackling War and Peace (and I assure you, they're not.)

The nightlight, of course, is purely for decoration, because my children sleep in their own version of the Las Vegas strip. I can hardly stand the glare, and there are three walls between my room and theirs.

Even with all those heroic kilowatt hours flying around, still these rooms (say the children) transform into spooky dungeons in the wee hours (I have not yet determined how they can tell the wee hours from the larger ones).

Knockings and tappings and creakings go on without prior written approval. Worse yet, their rooms have WINDOWS, and we all know what kind of creatures gravitate toward those things. Yes - MOTHS. Deadly fluttering suicidal moths, attracted to the searchlights that are their bedroom windows at night. Or bloodthirsty vampires, whichever.

Yes, we tried closing the blinds. But the light stampedes out around the sides at such a high velocity, that the darkness has to stay back behind a red velvet rope, or risk being trampled.

These infamous scratchy-tappy noises have proven highly vexing to kids (far and wide) minding their own business, trying to fall asleep. Not to mention parents trying to get the laundry folded and bills paid before bedtime. Mooooooooommmmm! I hear a noise!

Being the responsible, rational human being that I am, I've not neglected any of the usual parental coping steps, as outlined in the manual of common sense:
1. Patient reassurance
2. Firm reminders
3. Begging, pleading, and shameless bribery
4. Outright threats
5. Grumbling under my breath, and blaming my husband's chromosomes
6. And, finally, the purchase of two very loud fans

(Not that any of them worked.)

Ironically, the ticket to peace is to let the kids bunk in the same room together. This is the kiss of death in ten thousand other ways, but one should never underestimate the weakness of a sleep-deprived mother looking for a quick fix. 

Frightened children are notoriously illogical. They never bought my desperate third-world children argument. You know - the one of uneaten vegetable fame - where kids are starving for asparagus, clothed in tattered rags, room-deprived, and probably don't even have three-speed bikes.

Max, apparently, believes that his five-year-old sister is actually Spiderman.  Or some other superhero capable of stopping monsters in mid-stride, and striking fear into the hearts of shape-shifting shadows. Even while snoring. And even though she weighs about 35 pounds (the exact weight, if I'm not mistaken, of a single monster molar.)

She, in turn, thinks the big brother card trumps the vampire card, even considering the points listed in the above paragraph.

And all is peaceful, until *somebody touches *somebody else's stuff. Then the bumps in the night are of a completely different variety. The kind accompanied by "oofs" and "Ows" and shrill "STOP ITs". And that are best dealt with by a mother suggesting that quite possibly, monsters are attracted by such noises.