Boo Boo

There’s nothing like having to explain to strangers (and her teachers, and the nurse at the ENT’s office, and your mother….) why your toddler pitifully wails, “Boo boo, boo boo” over and over again while you’re zipping up her coat.

You see, a couple of weeks ago Ava had an itchy spot that she was scratching bloody every time we put her to sleep. Usually we have her in pajamas with a separate top and bottom, but I remembered that a friend had given us some zippered footed pajamas as some hand-me-downs that would be perfect for this situation because she wouldn’t be able to get to the itchy spot. It worked perfectly. She loved the footed pajamas. They are brown with colored dots and she would point to dot after dot saying “da, da, da, da……”. She didn’t want to take them off when she woke up and wore them for about two days straight.

Then……. One day at nap time I accidentally caught a little bit of her thigh in the zipper. It hurt and she was pretty upset, but she did forgive me and went to sleep with the pajamas on. Then that night when it was time to put it on again, she was worried and expressed her concern to her daddy by saying, “boo boo, boo boo” over and over again. He reassured her that he would be really careful and he was. But then at the last second she looked down as he was pulling the last bit of zipper up and he caught her chin in the zipper. Well, it hurt and she completely lost it. She pretty much sobbed until he took her back out of it and dressed her in something else for the night.

She’s refused to put them on ever since. I left them hanging over the banister for a while and every time she passed by she’d say, “boo boo, boo boo!” I finally put them away. Well, now every time she comes near a zipper she’s afraid. Her coat is a major problem, but it’s winter. We can’t avoid the coat. She’s even afraid of being buckled into her car seat. It’s crazy how she’s overgeneralized the situation and I don’t have the slightest clue how to deal with it. I’m not using the pajamas any more, but we have to use the coat and the car seat. Anyone have suggestions?