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Tonight difficult child Couldn't Sleep because . . . . .
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 28043" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>This has reminded me - difficult child 1 used to be terrified of ALL animals. He would be hysterical at the sight of a kitten in a neighbour's yard. There was no reason for this that we could ever ascertain - we first saw it when he was little more than a baby. But education worked for him - birds were the breakthrough, when he went tagging birds with his father and some other experts. He quickly learnt a lot about birds and enjoyed releasing them again after all the measurements had been taken. His tiny fingers were very skilful at getting the birds safely out of the mist nets. Eventually his confidence gradually spread to other animals as his knowledge of animals increased. He is still afraid but to a far less extent. He had a couple of scares at the zoo, although safety measures should be in place to keep zoo staff safe, accidents do happen.</p><p>The funny thing is, difficult child 1's girlfriend is fostering kittens and he gets A LOT of hands on with the kittens. Studying their behaviour has, I think, been what worked for him. Once you have a better idea of what they're likely to do, you are less afraid.</p><p></p><p>Spiders - we're not all that fond of them either, but we get a lot of mosquitoes so we allow spiders to live (if they're not too nasty). Where possible, we'll evict spiders instead. We've even had a large black house spider spinning her webs in our kitchen window, inside the house. When she hatched out a lot of babies, though, she had to go.</p><p>We've got a few nasty spiders in Australia that we will kill on sight. Of course, they're thoroughly described in the first aid book too, so difficult child 3 can identify them easily. But apart from the occasional house spider and a lot of daddy-long-legs, we rarely have any spiders in the house. Outside we have the redback spider, the Aussie version of black widow. But we don't worry about them much, except to check under things we're about to pick up to make sure we're not about to put our hand on one of these. Widows won't attack, they only bite in self-defence. Funnel-web spiders, on the other hand... aggressive little beggars. mother in law hates spiders and won't even allow them in her garden, although we only remove the ones who keep building webs across the pathways. Some of our biggest and prettiest spiders are harmless to people (apart from causing a fit of hysterics). learning to recognise which are good and letting those ones alone, or simply watching them, can help a lot with spider phobia. We had a St Andrews Cross spider who used to build her web outside a permanently closed window. We could sit inside and watch her catch insects. When a male turned up we watched the courtship, laying bets on whether the male would survive the experience. The female has a body as big as an adult thumb while the male is little more than pinhead sized. We saw several males fail, and one that got away. And now, even easy child 2/difficult child 2, the most squeamish in the family, will move a garden spider using a stick rather than kill it. No more screaming hysterically.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 28043, member: 1991"] This has reminded me - difficult child 1 used to be terrified of ALL animals. He would be hysterical at the sight of a kitten in a neighbour's yard. There was no reason for this that we could ever ascertain - we first saw it when he was little more than a baby. But education worked for him - birds were the breakthrough, when he went tagging birds with his father and some other experts. He quickly learnt a lot about birds and enjoyed releasing them again after all the measurements had been taken. His tiny fingers were very skilful at getting the birds safely out of the mist nets. Eventually his confidence gradually spread to other animals as his knowledge of animals increased. He is still afraid but to a far less extent. He had a couple of scares at the zoo, although safety measures should be in place to keep zoo staff safe, accidents do happen. The funny thing is, difficult child 1's girlfriend is fostering kittens and he gets A LOT of hands on with the kittens. Studying their behaviour has, I think, been what worked for him. Once you have a better idea of what they're likely to do, you are less afraid. Spiders - we're not all that fond of them either, but we get a lot of mosquitoes so we allow spiders to live (if they're not too nasty). Where possible, we'll evict spiders instead. We've even had a large black house spider spinning her webs in our kitchen window, inside the house. When she hatched out a lot of babies, though, she had to go. We've got a few nasty spiders in Australia that we will kill on sight. Of course, they're thoroughly described in the first aid book too, so difficult child 3 can identify them easily. But apart from the occasional house spider and a lot of daddy-long-legs, we rarely have any spiders in the house. Outside we have the redback spider, the Aussie version of black widow. But we don't worry about them much, except to check under things we're about to pick up to make sure we're not about to put our hand on one of these. Widows won't attack, they only bite in self-defence. Funnel-web spiders, on the other hand... aggressive little beggars. mother in law hates spiders and won't even allow them in her garden, although we only remove the ones who keep building webs across the pathways. Some of our biggest and prettiest spiders are harmless to people (apart from causing a fit of hysterics). learning to recognise which are good and letting those ones alone, or simply watching them, can help a lot with spider phobia. We had a St Andrews Cross spider who used to build her web outside a permanently closed window. We could sit inside and watch her catch insects. When a male turned up we watched the courtship, laying bets on whether the male would survive the experience. The female has a body as big as an adult thumb while the male is little more than pinhead sized. We saw several males fail, and one that got away. And now, even easy child 2/difficult child 2, the most squeamish in the family, will move a garden spider using a stick rather than kill it. No more screaming hysterically. Marg [/QUOTE]
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