Monsters on the bed

Monsters have been out to get Ella's (toy) cat and her (plastic) tigers lately. They try to bite them, I was told. But I learnt that the monsters cannot come onto the bed. Still it's not all that practical to be stuck on a bed indefinitely only because you happen to be responsible for protecting your friends and babies from scary monsters.

So I told Ella that monsters are scared of songs. She sang a song and lo and behold, the monsters ran away! Unfortunately they came back as soon as she stopped singing. As much as I enjoy her singing, the thought of having her sing 'Baa baa black sheep' non-stop just to keep the monsters at a safe distance, didn't appeal to me all that much.

So I decided to try a different approach. I told Ella that some monsters are actually quite nice. And that they often get sad because everyone is scared of them and they have no one to play with.

She accepted this immediately without questioning, and now the monsters are part of Ella's ever expanding family. She likes the baby monsters especially. She puts them to bed and talks to them in her mummy voice, and warns me not to step on them or wake them up.

Not sure what the lesson is here, but Ella and I are happy, the cat and tigers are happy and now the monsters are happy too. Win-win.