Took the kids to the Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum yesterday and while they enjoyed it throughly, my three year old was TERRIFIED of a room that was mocked up to look like it was under the prehistoric sea (ie- beginnings of life, mollusks etc.), including a glass floor and underwater bubbling soundtrack. She literally froze up, almost hyperventilated and had to be carefully eased out of the room. I think she thought she had been mysteriously teleported into an underwater environment and her brain exploded, unable to tell her how to get out.

What weird stuff has freaked your kids out? I don't count clowns and creepy marionettes, as ANYONE in their right mind is bothered by them ;-)

2nd kid is completely freaked out by passing vehicles. If we're in the car on the road she's perfectly ok with other vehicles passing us by but if we're walking down the sidewalk or in a parking lot she totally freaks.

In my youth, I had a "real" hooded cobra that was stuffed (preserved?) in a full coiling to strike position.

Yes my wife hated it. When we first married, I wanted it out and displayed, my wife wanted to throw it away. As a compromise she hid it in a cabinet. When my barely walking daughter opened the cabinet one day, she absolutely flipped out, screamed in a way we had never experienced, tried to scurry away as fast as her little arms and legs could drag her. She didnt stop moving arms and legs even after we picked her up. She wouldnt go near that cabinet for months.

What amazed me was that at that age she had no experience with snakes, and couldnt speak. It must be one of those deep seated "survival instincts" that babies come hard wired with.

El Destructo has a really deep hatered for our vacuum. Srsly. He hates that damn thing. I've tried talking to him about it a bit and he starts out ok...and if I go on too long he'll be in a full-long panic. So odd.

Wookie - I really deep down most little kids are afraid of water in some way. I have nothing backing me up in that but just one of those opinions...

D is highly suspicious of toys that move on their own, although he will sometimes get used to them if given a chance. The whirring noise of mechanical toy gears engaging totally stops him cold.

GG - D also used to be very strongly against the vacuum, but has come around since I got out his "lawnmower" (one of those old fashioned push-bubblers) and have him vacuum along with me. I think with both his fear of the toys and the vacuum, it's the lack of control over the loud unpredictable thing that freaks him out, so pretending that he's running the vacuum makes him feel better, I think. (Now, he sometimes even gets mad when I'm done with the vacuuming.)

GG - PP is scared to death of the vacuum. She's okay with it until I walk toward the plug and plug it in and then she drops down to a crawl and crawls away just as fast as those pudgy legs will take her, usually while whimpering in terror. I guess she crawls instead of walks away because it's still faster for her. I try to only vacuum when she's in her bed, but it's hard. Poor baby.

Another vote for kid hating the vacuum here. He also hates horses, the electric pump (for air mattresses or tires), and an assortment of other strange things.

At around age 2 my younger son was petrified of mooing. Not cows necessarily, but mooing toys, so later he eventually became afraid of cows, and the classic See and Say toy. I used to have to warn his early intervention therapists not to bring any mooing toys or make a realistic mooing sound while they played with him.

1st kid still hates the vacuum at age 6 but he no longer runs screaming from it. He also dislikes blow dryers.

well to his credit, ruth, a realistic moo is a pretty creepy noise.

sorry, hit return too early- i meant to add that those wierd little moo-cans that moo when you turn them over still kind of freak me out.

the little man dislikes blowdryers and other loud whooshing noises. wierdly, though, he likes the noise espresso makers make. probably from hearing it so much in utero, since i spent a lot of my pregnancy studying at coffee shops.

Himself loves the vacuum cleaner. He pushes around the canister and tries to get his toes "eaten" by the head.

He doesn't have a lot of things he freaks out about. Although around Hallowe'en he was pretty funny. He absolutely loves pumpkins but would NOT go near them when they were lit up. I had to carry him up our stairs to go in the house after trick or treating.

Oooh, and the Tyrell Museum! I am SO jealous. We were there one summer when I was about 12 and you can go on dinosaurs digs and I found a tooth! It's labeled somewhere in the bowels of the museum.

The Little Miss used to be afraid of self-propelled toys. Little B had this black and white robot that would move and when it hit an obstacle, it would turn itself and go in a different direction. Holy shit, you'd think this thing would have had fangs dripping with smoking, hissing venom the way she screamed.

Then for their birthday last year, AlphaGeek's parents got them this Curious George tub toy. There was a port in the head for bubble solution, and the stomach acted as a sort of bellows, and if you squeezed it, it was supposed to blow bubbles out of its mouth. Well, I made the mistake of squeezing it prior to adding the bubbles, so there were not pretty bubbles floating out of his mouth...only a strange wheezy hiss. Little Miss FLIPPED OUT. She wouldn't stop crying for like ten minutes, and insisted that I put it where she couldn't see it if she came into my bathroom. I feel bad about laughing at her, but well, it was funny.

I had this friend who bought his daughter one of those princess vanity tables, and if you pressed a button, a princess would appear in the mirror and talk to you. He really didn't think about it, and was all excited on christmas morning when she opened it...she pressed the button, a disembodied head talked to her from behind the mirror, and she freaked right the fuck out and ran screaming from the room. He was telling us about it, and I was like, "Dude, can you blame her? Can you imagine shaving your face in the bathroom and suddenly there's a head in your mirror talking to you? Poor girl!"

Miles has this weird thing he does with random strangers. He'll fling himself toward me, point to the person and say, "That man/lady is scaaaary!" and then clutch his fists to his chest and shudder/tremble.

LMAO, ellie, that's fucking hilarious. Some of the things they make for kids, honestly - i don't know who on earth thinks up this stuff, and who on earth thinks it's a valid idea and should be produced and marketed... talking head in mirror is not for the faint of heart.

Our girl loves the vaccum cleaner, don't know why. She wants to have a "go" every time we get it out, she has to hold the neck and push a bit. Since she's half the size of it, and can't actually move it around, the overall effect is more that she is sort of dancing with it. Or waving a flag, type of thing. If we turn it off before she's had a turn, she gets most upset.

The only thing that she's scared of, that i know of, is her granddad. She cries at the sight of him, without fail. Bawls her little eyes out and tries to climb over us to get away from him. I have no idea why.

Capt- i agree with you on the snake thing. the Dictator had no experience with snakes. we were at a friend's house who had 2 small ball pythons. i mean, they were a foot and a half TOPS. D freaked the fuck out when we pulled one from the terrarium to let him pet it. it was so weird!

So Capt, I'm guessing that was the end of the Cobra?

Well, speaking of dinosaurs, we had decided to take my nieces to the Field Museum while they were visiting for T-giving. I then told her that we were going to get on the bus and go see a dinosaur. She freaked out-"I don't want to see dinosaurs." She finally did look, but was subsequently freaked out by the dark rooms with the stuffed animals. Needless to see the Field Museum visit did not go quite like intended. But for those who might visit Chicago in the future, you should know that there is a fantastic Playlab for kids 3-8 in the basement. It saved the trip!

We have two antique figurines of a boy and a girl. They were made in the late 1800's in France. I inherited them from my late Grandmother, they're probably about 10 inches high, and they are just a fancy looking boy and fancy looking girl with pale skin and rosy cheeks. They reside in our curio cabinet (also from my Grandma) and my soon to be 3 year old is super scared of them. I have to keep them in the back where they can't really be seen. He always screams "Giants!!!" and gets really upset.
Ok, so this isn't a child, but I used to have a cat who was really freaked out by baseball caps. Whenever he saw one, especially just laying around that no one was wearing he would puff up and hiss at it.

Hilarie, your child yelling "giants" at 10 inch figurines cracked me up.

Here's the bottom line... toddlers are WEIRD. There's just no two ways about it. They're little freaks, and it's why I love them so.

Capt- did you hide the x-mas presents in the closet with the snake. That would be beautiful. My daughter is hell bent on finding out what's in my closet after I did my. I need to borrow that snake.

My daughter was terrified of my friend's sequin clogs (so was I but for a different fashion-related reason, so WNTW hello Stacy and Clinton). She would SCREAM and run away. It was the funniest thing I have ever seen. I would be trying to comfort her while laughing. Talk about freaking her head off! She also had a severe reaction to the movie "Flushed Away". She doesn't even like to talk about it. Flushing living things is just plain wrong in her book- even if there is a nifty sewer world for the flushed creatures.

Big O is still terrified when I cut her toenails. I cut her fingernails once a week because they grow like weeds, but the toes only need it once a month. Even tonight when I snipped them, it's a fight to keep her from wiggling, twisting, yanking them away, or just plain running away, all the while whimpering and crying. And that's WITH her favorite show being on as a distraction. Been that way her whole life. I've never even drawn blood!

Ebay so far isn't scared of much, other than me leaving the room. She does whimper when we're driving at night and there's no light in the car, but I don't know if it's the dark in general or just that she can no longer see me in her mirror.

HBD - Beenie does the whimper in the dark too, i forgot until you said that, cos she's usually asleep once the car starts. But now and then, she'll stay awake and sort of sook the whole way. Does same if i turn the light off before she's really asleep too. Again, i forget that, cos i hardly ever do it.

What you mean get rid of the cobra now that we found out just how fun it really was? no way! I had two more kids to experiment on.

We still have the cobra, and while the kids are no longer freaked out by it, it gets the dog every time.

Peanut hates my parents dog and goes out of her way to freak out drama queen style when he's within 5 feet of her. They are quite the rivals for Grandmoms attention.

Raidne, for the longest time, was terrified of "the steam". I'm not sure exactly what it is (was) but the only thing I can think of is that when she had the croup at about 2 years old, we took her into the steamy bathroom. Her fever was scary high (about 104.5) and she was kind of delirious. I think after that she just equated all nightmares/scary things with the steam, but man it used to freak me out. She also has a completely over the top reaction to any kind of choking thing. We had a Zooboomafoo video where the lemur gets wrapped up on some horses rope and gets pulled over. It's around his neck and while it doesn't really hurt him, it would leave her shrieking every time. If I believe in reincarnation, I'd swear she died of some kind of strangulation in a past life.

Wild Thing's fears are all pretty normal.

Me. In the shower.

On three separate occasions in the last week the Mr. has brought her in to say "hi" to mommy in the shower (personal space? no, we don't have that at our house). Every time, she pulls that crazy-but-adorable infant frowny-face and then starts screeching like she's on fire. It takes him a full five minutes to calm her afterwards.

I have NO idea what the deal is, but it's not doing a lot for mommy's self-esteem...

Atomic, Ebay does that too, I forgot. She's OK if I'm bending over the tub and I'm washing my hair with the handheld shower, but if I'm standing in the tub, even with one door open, she cries pretty hard. Maybe because we look different with wet hair?

Capt - HA! Now I want a stuffed dog to scare our cat. Although, she's scared enough of the vacuum cleaner.

atomic - We had a period where Beenie needed to be washed quickly many times. She was a bit scared of the shower at first, but she very quickly changed her mind and now she loves it.

Bol, the weird thing is that she loves the bath and in fact we take baths together all the time. It's actually the easiest way to get through the pre-bedtime crabbies. So I know it's not a fear of the tub itself, or water, or anything like that.

HBD I wonder if you're right about the hair. I have heavy bangs and when I wash my hair, they're brushed off my face. That plus how dark my hair is while wet... I probably look different enough from normal-mommy to be scary.

I'm going to reassure myself it's that, and that she's not nearly old enough to be crying about lousy genes.

A new one to add to D's list: tonight he looked at a flyer sent by the Boston Museum of Science that had a frog on it. The frog had a weird, blown up throat and I heard D say, "little bit scared. Just a picture."

The dude has things to teach me.

Psst, atomic - I'm not BoL. I thought I'd better mention it since I think that's the second time.

RE: Hair - I seem to remember Beenie was a little weird at me when I shaved off the beard.

LOL - yehuh, i think someone gave ME credit for YOUR burrito seasoning recipe the other day. It's cos we look so alike, baby. We confuse. :)

I thought all Aussies were named Bol? You mean you're not?

In Atomic's defense, she may have been looking at avatars, since there's so much yellow in both of yours, she may have seen yellow and thought Bol, since I have a tendency to scroll really fast and when I see yellow, I think it's Bol.

*sigh* How embarrassing. Yes, it's the avatars. I see yellow and stick figures, I think Zero Punctuation, and immediately assume it's Bol. Sorry!

we are easy to tell apart, i'm the fat one, he is taller with pink hair.

should i go back to the sword-weilding girl one? i'm thinking maybe the desk and the gun can look pretty similar if you scroll them up and down fast.

Lucky i don't have pink hair, innit. ;)

And Ellie, not all Aussies are called Bol, no... the rest are called Bruce.

Or Paul Hogan!