Teaching Courage

Little L is 18 months old and scared of the noises that come from the furnace in the basement.  He will play quietly and alone with his toys until the furnace comes on. Once it does, he will drop whatever he’s doing, run over to you and become glued to you or ask to be picked up.  After the furnace comes on, he will want you to be a maximum of 1 foot away from him where you could have been in the same room as him before and he would not have minded.
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We have told him many times that the noise is the furnace and we’ve brought him over to show him the furnace and he still runs whenever it comes on.  

One morning, when we were playing, the furnace came on and he came running over to me again.  I did what I usually do, held him and told him that Mommy’s here. This time I added something new.  I looked at him and said, today, we’re going to practice courage. I know you won’t understand this right now, but one day you will.  There will be things that scare us in life and sometimes we will run away and that will be ok. Running can even save your life. Other times, when your life isn’t in danger, you will stand and stay put despite wanting to run away.

I figure that if I repeat this to him enough times, one day, he may understand.  We then walked over, together to the furnace (while it was on) and practiced courage.  

FEAR: forget everything and run or FACE EVERYTHING AND RISE

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