From Fear to Love
What my son’s bedtime terror taught me about the shadows we all try to avoid
"But there's a bear in the bathroom!"
My son warned us about the Bathroom Bear for days. The first time he mentioned it, it was playful. I told him to fight it. He went in, returned, and told us he had trapped it in the walk-in shower.
The next night, he fought the bear again. This time, I told him to flush it down the toilet. We heard the flush, and he came out smiling. Is that the end of Bathroom Bear?
No. Now it's bedtime. I lay in my son's bed, holding a copy of What Do You Do With a Problem? It's storytime, but he has to pee.
"Okay, buddy. You go, I'll wait here." I said.
"But you have to come with me!"
"Why?"
"The bear!"
"I thought you flushed it down the toilet?"
No. It's still in there.
In his eyes, I could see he wasn't joking. His fear was real, even if the bear wasn't. I told him to show me.
He pointed to the wall above the toilet. There it was—a small painting of a baby black bear—a leftover design detail from my mother-in-law's time in the house. It's the sort of thing that blends itself into the background—something so much a part of the decor that it often goes unnoticed—but not to a four-year-old.
"That's just a cute baby. It's not gonna hurt you."
"No, Daddy, it's a BIG bear!"
I took a beat, wondering how to move forward. How do I make him feel safe and get him into bed?
Then, I remembered the gift I'd found for him the first night in the hospital.
My son was six weeks premature. It was supposed to be a routine checkup, followed by a "date" at home with Qdoba burritos and a bad movie. Instead, the doctor diagnosed preeclampsia and ordered induced labor.
Between trying to calm my wife's terror and ensuring she had everything she needed, I wanted to find the perfect teddy bear. Searching for weeks, I hadn't settled on one. That night, I ordered a small, dark brown Vermont Teddy Bear. Delivered a few days later, the commotion surrounding the baby's birth pushed the bear into a box somewhere, where it stayed until we unpacked after moving from Milwaukee to Tennessee.
The bear finally found appreciation about a year ago. My son found it in his closet. I told him its origin story. He didn't fully understand, but for a few weeks, he loved the bear. When I asked him what we should call it, he smiled and said, "Black Teddy."
Black Teddy bounced around several places in the home for months, but the night of the Bear in the Bathroom, it sat by the fireplace hearth in our living room.
"Would you feel better if you could hug the bear?" I asked.
"Yeah!"
I told my son to wait and scurried to the living room. I returned with the bear, peeked its little head around the bathroom door frame, and said in a soft, terrible Southern drawl, "Hi there!"
"BLACK TEDDY!"
He remembered.
I told him the painting was Black Teddy, and he just wanted a hug.
For about two days, Black Teddy and my son were like that old My Buddy commercial. Teddy went to daycare and swim practice and was my son's go-to bed companion. The spell wore off, but it lasted long enough to end the terror of the bathroom bear.
I told my son to fight the bear before I understood his fear. When he showed me, I remembered my own fear. As a timid kid, I steered away from dark shadows. I refused to sleep in my grandma's spare bedroom, terrified of a small doll sitting in a rocking chair in the corner. I still have an unreasonable fear of dolls and statues.
But I've also learned the ultimate counter-punch to fear that defies logic: diversion. Sometimes, fear loses its grip when we link it to something non-threatening—even lovable. If we get enough practice, we may learn to use the same technique to conquer our own "bears in the bathroom."
Unexamined fear grows like a shadow. And often, what we're afraid of isn't the thing itself but what we've imagined it to be.
As parents, it's our job to teach our children courage without shaming their fear. A scared child needs warm empathy and clarity, not cold dismissal.
My son faced a bear in the bathroom, and I remembered the doll in the corner. The threats weren't real, but the fear was. The remedy isn't to deny it—it's to bring the fear into the light, give it a name, and offer it a hug.
That's how we teach courage: not by dismissing or minimizing the fear but by reminding ourselves—and our children—that we can choose how to see it.
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Heart-touching. Reminded me of the boggart chapter from Harry Potter! Expecto Patronum!