July 19, 2002 - Friday
Last night we had quite a loud thunder storm pass through sometime after midnight. It woke me up and, not surprisingly, it woke Harry up. (Interestingly, Jeremy seemed unaffected at first.) Harry cried out and I immediately went to him and laid with him for a little while on his bed. I wouldn't have done it had the thunder not been so loud, but was Harry was legitimately scared by it. I'd explained thunder once before by talking about how the clouds were just playing, banging into each other, and running amok making noise just like Harry likes to do, except that the clouds where a little bigger and more noise. That worked great last time, Harry even got to think of the thunder as something pretty funny, but it wasn't nearly as loud that time. This time the same explanation didn't quite do the job. As much as Harry smiled about it, the noise was really too much.

I went back to bed before too long, thinking the worst had passed, but I was wrong. More came and that meant Harry wanted more "snuggling." It was a no-win situation from all sides. I had tried to comfort Harry, but by doing so I had done something that I suspected he really liked: staying with him in his bed to calm his fears during the storm. Is he really that clever and manipulative that he would use such a thing as fear of a storm to work our responses. Of course, there's no way to know, but I do believe he's certainly capable whether or not it's a conscious thing.

I hesitated to repeat it, but with each thunder crash, heavy or not, we could hear Harry come into the hall and, usually into our room. Most of the time, knowing he really should be in bed, Harry peeked in our room, then went back on his own. But, eventually there was another very loud sequence of thunder that would certainly be frightening to a youngster. I figured maybe I could actually fall asleep in his room and took him back and laid down next to him. I stayed for an hour, maybe, perhaps dozing off, but not really. When I woke him up I figured Harry was asleep and tried to leave. Unfortunately, if he was asleep I woke him up. Oh boy! I hate to be cross with him in these situations, he was legitimately scared before, but now it had passed and I had so much work to be done over the next couple of days. I needed to stand firm. I really don't want Harry to think thta it's bad to be scared, or worried, or hurt, but I also sense that there's a line somewhere there. Had he crossed it? I really just don't know. But, I had.


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