Strange sounds and lights

 It was a few years before my son was born that I developed an interest in the topic of fear. I had realized that fear creeps into our lives in a million small ways, and we make numerous subconscious decisions each day to avoid potentially fearful experiences. But some of my greatest lessons in fear came after I became a parent. One particular episode comes to my mind. 

When my son was about two and a half, we had a water filter in the kitchen. This particular water filter had a self-cleaning mechanism that would kick in every few hours, at which point it would make strange sounds, and multiple lights would start blinking. One night at about 10 PM, my son and I were in the hall and I was coaxing him to finish his glass of milk. Just as he finished his milk, I switched off the light, and incidentally, the water filter's self-cleaning mechanism kicked in right then. We could hear strange sounds. The blinking lights led to ominous looking psychedelic shadows on the wall. 

Our son ran up to me frightened and said 'Appa, what is that ? . I am scared'. I held him tight, and said ' Shall we go check what that is ?' . He hesitated. So, I said to him ' I will lift you up, hold you tight, and we will go check out what that is. Is that okay ?' He agreed, and said ' okay, but hold me tight' . 

 So I picked him up, and we walked up to the entrance of the kitchen, and I said 'Oh it is our water filter making those sounds and lights.'  I gave him a few moments to absorb this. His fear had reduced a bit. Afterall, he was familiar with the water filter. It wasn't some strange ghost. 

I then asked him ' What coloured lights do you see? ' and he responded with 'yellow and green'. By asking a factual question, I was trying to lead him from very emotional fear based thinking to a more logical analysis. 

And then I asked him ' Shall we go closer and take a look? ' He agreed. We walked up, right next to the water filter, and I had him touch the tip of some of those lights. He realized that he could block out a part of the light using the tips of his fingers and he played with it for a while. 

And then came the moment. 

I said to him ' You know what. If you want , you can even turn off these loud sounds and lights. Would you like to do that ? ' . He immediately nodded and said 'Yes!' with great enthusiasm. I then placed his little finger on the switch, and said 'Go ahead, turn it off'. 

And poof. 

The strange sounds and lights stopped. My son felt like a superman. 

I knew something had shifted inside him. From being afraid of something, he had gone to the point of having power over it, in a matter of minutes. If I had dismissed his initial fears with 'It's just the water filter; nothing to worry', it wouldn't have been half as effective. 

Later that night, my son hugged me numerous times before he went to sleep. 

I know that he will face hundreds of scary experiences in his childhood.  He may not be able to articulate them a lot of the times. I may not be present a lot of the times. Or even if I am present, I may not always be able to handle it effectively and I may sometimes mess up. But the few times, when I do get a chance, I am trying to teach my son that whenever he experiences any sort of fear, it is time to explore what's happening like a curious scientist. 

A few months later, it was shadows that caused panic ( it's always the dark, in one form or the other...  isn't it ?) , but that's for a different post.