Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Back to Football


I think I have mentioned in past posts that my son is obsessed with football? I am not sure that you can possibly understand how obsessed he is until I tell you all of this. For awhile now HJ has suffered from night terrors. He wakes up half screaming half crying and scares the living day lights out of his momma. At first, they were every now and then. And then about a month ago, they started to be almost every night, and sometimes multiple times a night. Now night terrors are different from nightmares in that the person having them never fully wakes up. HJ will be sitting up in his bed with his eyes wide open looking at you and screaming and sometime talking in between the screams. He never remembers them in the morning and will often argue with me that he did not have a nightmare.
Now it is what HJ will be saying in his screaming fits that had KJ and I a little worried. HJ would be screaming about people playing the wrong plays, going the wrong way on the field, and not winning. It is really hard to understand him when he is talking during a night terror b/c he just mumbles and can't answer any questions. When I finally figured out what all the fuss was about (football!) I decided that this was not normal. My son is not scared of monsters, dragons, boogy men, NO, my son is scared of his favorite teams losing and not playing the right play. This is not normal for a 4.5 year old!
Both KJ and I decided that football was off limits for HJ for awhile. He has not been allowed to play or watch football now for awhile and it has worked! The dreams have stopped!
However, we couldn't take it away forever. He loves it to much. Yesterday, I allowed him to get his football and uniforms out and he played. We had no nightmares yesterday and hopefully with a little less enthusiasm from us and no football on TV (sorry KJ) we can keep them at bay.
My kid is weird! What do you expect with KJ and I as parents?

0 comments: