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My 23 month old daughter had a very terrifying moment yesterday evening while mommy was at the gym. Apparently, she had her 1st encounter with a .....wait for it....::GASP:: Lightning bug! The horrifying creature was loose in my sisters house and landed on Piper's forearm and my sister looks over and my daughter is dancing wildly and flailing her arms screaming in full on panic mode "beat da bug!" "BEAT DA BUG!" Even after my sister swooped in and rescued her from her near death experience she wouldn't stop crying and kept her right fist clenched like a miniature rambo baby ready to crush any bug that came into her air space! She literally kept her hand clenched like that until I put her to bed only opening it when I asked her if I could kiss her hand. She would let me kiss her palm and then reclench immediately! She spent the next hour curled up in my sisters lap with her head on her chest and that's how I spent a half hour tonight before bed. Pitiful child. (And, I'm going to hell but I laughed my ass off......)

She is going to be such a little girlie girl!!! My tomboy sister is going to die!

[This message edited by She11ybeanz at 9:34 AM, July 11th (Friday)]

It sounds like she needs to be desensitized to insects and other little critters. Maybe show her a "friendly bug" crawling on your hand as you laugh and say how it tickles and how cute it is. Something that won't fly away--a sow bug/pillbug/roly poly or some other equally cute and benign insect.

I'm actually taking her to a Butterfly Release tonight at our local museum but am a little nervous now after this "incident' occurred. Not sure how she will do....

Be prepared that she thinks the butterflies are beautiful until they get released and then freaks out. My DD (now 11) was probably 3 when we first went to a butterfly hatchery and she loves butterflies until she saw one land on her and then she had a melt down.

I think the lightning bug might be foreshadowing.

Have fun tonight anyway

Oh lord..... what is supposed to be a beautiful event is going to turn into Indiana Jones and Temple of DOOM!

Oh well.....

You can prepare her.

Build up the beauty of butterflies. Tell her how they are really shy and how you should be quiet so as not to scare them. Make her believe that if one lands on her that they must be tired and feel safe and she should be proud to be choosen.

It is a sad thing about the lightning bug as those are really cool bugs. My kids loved when the backyard would be full of them.

When you first posted about the butterfly release, my first thought was of my then-toddler daughter's response the first time we visited the butterfly exhibit at the museum (not favorable, but very funny--and resulting in no permanent emotional scarring, as near as I can tell).

I hope you had a good time

She did really good even though she did swat at a few butterflies. I was able to monitor her and protect them from babyzilla....

I'm glad the butterfly release went relatively well.

DS3 is scared of bugs. He did like it when I caught a lightning bug though, and he even tried to hold it! His fears center around spiders, ants, and ladybugs. Spiders are understandable, but why ants and ladybugs you wonder? Because the kids in the neighborhood (including his brother and sister) told him that ants and ladybugs like to eat little boys. But we're working on that...