Parent Hack

We’re mostly over the fear of the Monkey King, now. I was talking with a friend about what we did to send it on its way, and she said, “That’s perfect, I wish I had thought of it.” So, I thought I’d share it here.

When you have a kid who is irrationally scared of a particular thing, and you’ve talked through all the reasons it’s not a thing one needs to be afraid of, and this has been going on for kind of too long, you can make the thing seem silly. I should note, I’m not advocating dismissing a child’s fears or telling him that they are silly. I absolutely believe in engaging with the kid’s fears and understanding them as real. But sometimes, it just goes on too long and is impeding life.

So, I had Silas draw the MK and then I added silly things around it (like, this is the MK…getting attacked by babies. This is the MK…swimming in chocolate pudding). That helped a little bit.

But the big sillyfier was the “Name Game” song. Silas loves rhymes and being silly with words, so it worked really well for him. We sang “Monkey monkey bo bunky” about a thousand times over the course of a couple of weeks, and it eventually deflated whatever terror remained.

Other songs that were less effective, but somewhat helpful, included “Who’s Afraid of the Monkey King” (aka “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”) and “God is Bigger than the Monkey King” (aka “God is Bigger than the Boogey Man”).