Who's afraid of the Big Bad Vacuum?

For the last couple of months of so (i think it started at 7 months?), hayaa's been scared of a number of different things.. sometimes she gets nervous if i put a load of laundry in the washer, or when the diswasher starts.. and then there was that time she was scared of bath tubs.. but those things came and went, and her fear of the vacuum still remained :p

We've tried a few things to ease her fears though.. for example, when she was scared of the bathtub, it was quite a problem.. i couldn't give her a bath without her screaming and standing up while in her tub, making it dangerous for her, because she could slip.. so our solution? i would put her bath in our bigger bathtub, fill it with water, sit beside it, put her in and give her toys to play with. It took her some time to adjust, but she did alhamdulillah... and there are still some days when the fear creeps up again.

With the vacuum, we've tried a number of different things. The first thing we do is to bring her close to it when it's off, and let her play with it, punch it, touch it etc. Then when I we start it, I usually go to her, hug her close and give her kisses while she's watching hubby do the vacuuming. One time, we were preparing for a party and she was getting scared while he was vacuuming and i was in the kitchen preparing food.. so he put the sling, put her in it and finished up the job.

How do I know she's scared?

She doesn't cry when we start the vacuum, but she gets very hyper all of a sudden and starts behaving wierd. She moves her arms around like a little bird trying to fly (:D) and babbles in her baby language..and shrieks excitedly.. initially we didn't think she was scared, we thought she was just really excited.. hah.. and then once she was sitting and playing with her toys and it started, and she started to shake (my poor baby).. and since then, i run to hold her whenever we start the vacuum, so finds comfort in my arms, even though her attention is totally towards it.

As children grow, they become scared of different things quite suddenly.. sometimes that thing is something they might be doing everyday, but suddenly they'll be scared of it one day (ie. taking a bath), and sometimes they remain scared of it (ie. vacuum), but it's important to understand that it's totally normal, and comfort them in the best way we can :) we are mothers, after all :)