3 Year Old Daughter with Sleep Disturbances Due to Seeing a Shadow Figure

I had a very vivid imagination as a child. I could see things even when I was awake and it was scary. It wasn't all the time though, usually when I was over tired or thinking about stuff when I was falling asleep.

So perhaps try getting her to sleep even if it means sleeping with you for a couple days, call it camping or something that says, this won't be a habit. Then don't let her watch TV or anything that makes her think about what she was just doing before she goes to bed.

I grew out of it for the most part but even as an adult if I am thinking deep thoughts when I go to bed I will have the worst night sleep ever!

I wrote my own post that's very similar to your own. My daughter (3 yo) went through an intense phase of this. After a few weeks, it began to get better. We had a lot of mornings of droopy eyes and big yawns during that time. She still claimed to see the "lady in the darkness", but it's been quite a while now since she's mentioned it.
We bought a Spoka from Ikea. Basically, a little rechargeable, soft glowing nightlight. It's LED so it doesn't get hot and one charge lasts all night. We put it at the head of her bed and call it "glow cat". We told her glow cat keeps away shadows and anything like that, so she shouldn't be scared. It has really helped, I think.
I also took her in her room and gave the "lady in the darkness" a good talking to. I think it helped her to hear me tell the "lady" to stop scaring her and to leave her alone. And I told her to do the same the next time she sees the lady. I think that just hearing that from me helped show her that I wasn't scared of the "lady" and also gave her confidence not to be scared herself.

well, putting aside the possibility that she actually has picked up a psychic hitchhiker (very rare but some of us are acquainted with such things), this is a pretty common thing for littles who are developing imaginations and words. and what works for most of them is something like monster spray, and/or guardian stuffed animals.
my two nieces went through something similar (not coincidentally when there was some anger and disruption in their home) and i got them each a beautiful stuffed dragon. we named them and enchanted them with protective powers, and they worked......er..........like a charm.
;)
i also think this is the time to allow co-sleeping, although of course it has the potential to backfire.
littles DO need to learn to differentiate between imagination and reality, but i don't think it's helpful to dismiss their fears out of hand. it's very hard for adults, with years of empirical programming hardened in our psyches, to remember what it's like to be 3 and wide open. just telling them they're wrong often sets them up to distrust their own feelings and intuition.
khairete
S.

I have something that i think really might work for you. My youngest who turned four a few months ago used to be deathly afraid of bees. this went on for awhile until one day out of the blue, he started totally freaking out about bees stinging his eye, throat, etc..He would be terrorized, absolutely convinced bees were attacking him, when there was NOTHING there. I had to talk him off a ledge many times. One day in the car i had to pull over and called the pediatrician in a panic because i literally thought he was having a nervous breakdown. She told me to buy a water spray bottle, label it BEE SPRAY and whenever he thought bees were attacking him, start spraying it. I actually drove straight to CVS and did what she said, and it worked immediately. No more freak outs from that day forward. He still steers clear of bees (as anyone would) but no more neurosis. She told me this often works for any type of fear, so i would buy a bottle, label it perhaps Shadow Spray (or ghost spray or whatever) and give it to her to keep with her and explain it gets rid of the shadows. I hope this works for you! I do however agree with Marie C about actual hauntings, as hard as it is to believe. It would be interesting to research the history of your home and see about past occupants.

This is pretty typical but no fun for her. But try hard not to let her trips to your bed frazzle you. This seems like it takes forever when it's going on but it will pass, eventually.

Be careful to take her seriously and never dismiss what she's saying -- I do not think you are doing that now, I'm just noting that it's so easy for us adults to get frustrated and say, "Now that's enough, this is silly" when we're worn out with a child who can't settle. She needs the security of knowing you and dad take her fears seriously whether they're rational or not. Fear, at her age, can't be rationalized away. It sounds like you do listen to her and she does communicate about this with you,, which is good -- she is willing to talk about what scares her and that's what you want her to feel comfortable doing.

Try working with her to create her own ritual to banish the shadow. Get a new, clean spray bottle and stickers of things she really likes, positive things like favorite characters or sayings or letters to spell her name, etc. Then have her fill the bottle with water you've set aside beforehand (so she doesn't see that it's just tap water) and she can add one drop of food coloring in her favorite "magical" color. This is now "dream spray" that dispels any bad things in her room and makes the air full of good dreams. Let her spray it high in the air in her bedroom each night as she says whatever special spell she wants -- she can shout loudly, "Good dreams come, bad things be gone!" or she can whisper or sing or whatever -- just make it a ritual and tell her she has control over making her room and her bedtime better. She needs to feel some control here. If she still sees the shadow despite dream spray etc., tell her that it takes time and to try again that night.

Have you walked over every inch of the house by day with her to ask her where exactly she's seen the shadow? Try it, and be sure to find something interesting, nice and distracting in each room. Note that "there's nothing here in the dark that isnt' here in the light" -- though she may not buy that for a while yet.

Also have you sat in her room at bedtime, with the lighting exactly as she would have it after "lights out" time, and looked very carefully to see if there are shadows being thrown by objects that you, as the adult, just don't notice much -- but which may frighten her? A blanket that lies over the back of a chair could look like nothing by day but cast a scary, person-sized shadow in the glow of a night-light or -- since she doesn't want any light -- there can still be shadows in a room, cast by light from outside at night. Look all around while you sit with her and pick out each shadow and identify what casts it. If something seems odd, get up and show her that you can move the object and the shadow changes or goes away. You might also need to just remove things that cast odd shadows.

If she really needs to sleep with you for a time, let her. Do put her to bed in her own bed, with a ritual, maybe an extended but consistent bedtime if stories distract her. But letting her into your bed some of the time, even many nights, for a while at this time does not mean that she will still be in your bed in a year. Truly. And it will not reinforce her fears, or mean you're "caving in" to her, if you let her take comfort with you and dad at times. If you need instead to stay in her room while she goes to sleep in her own bed, again, that does not mean she will forever need you to do it. She really will get past this and it's not spoiling her to comfort her, as long as you also give her some control over the fear as well, and work with her on feeling like she can banish the shadow.

If you just don't want to sit in her room while she goes to sleep, try sitting outside her door with the door cracked so she can see you but you are not right inside the room. I did that for some months as a transition when my daughter was learning to sleep in her toddler bed and it really helped keep her in bed --she knew I was there but also knew I was not going to be inside the room. She didn't come out to me or pop up and after a short time I could leave my post. Just an alternative to consider.

I have no idea what she's seeing, but my oldest daughter used to see them as well. We were told they are called "shadow people". You should Google it - it's very interesting. My mother-in-law told her that they were much like guardian angels and only special people could see them and that they won't hurt her. This comforted my then 2-5 yr. old immensely. (She saw them from about 2 yrs to about 5 1/2 yrs. old). Now, I don't know if you want to go that route in explaining it, but it helped my sweetie. They still scared her and she would come tell us when one was "present", but we never saw them. I don't think it's imagination at all. My daughter was 100% certain and not all of hers were the same size/shape.

Try not to dwell on it and just assure her that she's safe. Oh, and a lady I used to babysit for got a can of airfreshner and made a cover for it that said it was "BoogyManBeGone" and made it look really real. She had me spray a little in the room if her kid(s) got scared. Of course, you don't have to name it that, but.. still.. a good idea.

2 and 3 is prime time for nightmares, monsters under the bed (or in the closet), etc.
Their imagination is going all day long and that carries over into the night.
Also - kids haven't developed adult sleep mechanisms yet - they walk and talk in their sleep, and they can have night terrors - and often they don't even remember it the next morning.
Most do grow out of it eventually (I still talk and sometimes sing in my sleep).
Try things like monster spray, and night lights.
If she wants to sleep near you, then set up a sleeping bag next to your bed so if she wakes in the night and wants to be near you she can just come and tuck herself in on the floor next to you without waking you up (eventually - that last part takes time).
Maybe you can tell her the shadow is a guardian angel and the angry face is just to scare monsters away from her.

I made my child a 'sweet dreams' cloth. I used a plain white nice quality, extra soft facecloth which I sprayed with my favorite perfume (lightly, not drenching it). We talked about things that smell nice (cookies, flowers, the rain, etc) and things that smell bad (the trash, skunks, Uncle's feet after he's played basketball and takes his shoes off, or any smells that your child thinks are stinky). Good things have sweet smells, I reminded her, and I let her hold onto the sweet dreams cloth as she slept. It stayed with her longer than a room spray, I found. Maybe it was the smell, maybe the cloth in her hands, maybe just the mental association with good things, but it helped get rid of the scary stuff. And perhaps it made her feel validated - that we weren't dismissing her fears but giving her a tool to deal with them. Eventually I twisted the cloth into a little shape (in a knot) and she carried around for quite awhile.

This age is huge for imagination development, so it could be that. I know that even as an adult, I will see flashes of things from the corner of my eye, and they leave an impression in my mind of a human figure. Our minds are programmed to "humanize" things- it's why we will see a face in the patterns on wood and the like even if it barely resembles a face, so it is entirely possible that she sees a shadow, and in her mind it takes the form of this person she has imagined. When I was a kid, I saw slings in the shadows all the time. For about 2 years at my grandma's house I was convinced there was a little girl with curly hair and a teddy bear (even during the daytime.) But as I got older I was able to place the shapes and such with what was creating the impression in my head.

One thing that helped was having a flashlight to shine. I never liked having a night light either, but the flashlight sure gave me a lot of peace of mind. I used to sleep with it under my pillow so I could look at whatever was freaking me out. :)

-all that said, I personally do believe in hauntings, (though, I do not think this is what your daughter is experiencing... In all likelihood it is her imagination, bit I'm not there so I can't say anything for sure.) and that children are more susceptible to experience/whiteness paranormal activities... I also happen to know someone who is extremely knowledgable about the subject, and I can give you her (public) information if you are interested in talking to someone about this if you can't figure out a conventional method of helping her.

I completely disagree that you should not dismiss her fears. Encourage her imagination when she's not scaring herself out of a good night's sleep, otherwise, feel free to tell her calmly, firmly, and repeatedly that there is no shadow following her other than her own shadow (demonstrate this with a flashlight in a darkened room), and no angry face. Tell her that it's easy to mistake what we see in the dark, because our eyes don't see very well in the dark.

Then stop engaging her in conversation about the shadow, and insist she sleep with a dim light on for a few nights with a flashlight on her nightstand.

In response to other posters, 3-year-olds need their parent to be the ever-logical source of comfort when it comes to stuff like this, so please don't get swept up in the idea that she's seeing 'spirits'.

Her imagination is running away with her. I second the idea of letting her sleep with a flashlight. Then she can make the shadow go away all by herself.

Little children don't have fantasy and reality sorted out. They don't understand and can't explain many things they see and hear, and their imaginations can be very busy - especially at night. The big world can be scary for a three-year-old mind. It's scary enough for us grownups.

You can give her a little flashlight to have with her in the dark. She'll just play with it at first, but show her how to turn it on when she sees *any* suspicious shadows. Do it with her a few times. Cuddling is great (!), but start to make a move from cuddling toward thinking and resourcefulness.

She can even say, firmly, as she turns the flashlight on, "Shadow, what do you want?" It's something else to practice. That shadow needs to know that it's her room and she wants her sleep! She needs to hear her own voice handling this mysterious stranger.

Are you a praying family? Praying at night before (or after) the lights are out has no "magic" in it and shouldn't be used as such, but it can be a real comfort to a child if that's part of her family life regularly.

Also, to avoid a larger problem later, set a boundary on her sleeping with you. Tell her that if she must flee her own bedroom, she is welcome to bring her pillow and blanket (and teddy bear and flashlight) into your room and sleep on the floor next to Mama and Daddy. She must not wake anyone up as she does this. That way she is near her parents if she's really frightened, but it's not quite as much an attention-getter - not quite so much fun in itself.