This story happened a long time ago with my four-year-old son. He spent most of the summer with his grandmother at the dacha. When I once came to visit them, my mother crossed herself and said: “Lord, thank God, you’ve finally arrived!” Otherwise, I can’t do anything - Danya doesn’t move a single step, he only holds my hand everywhere. When he’s asleep, I can’t leave or run to the toilet. It turns out that my son began to be afraid of something, and in such a way that he really didn’t leave a single step from me now. I began to find out what happened to them, why such fear could suddenly appear, because before the child calmly played on his own in the area, went to visit neighboring houses, played alone on the second floor, and suddenly - how they replaced him. Mom remembered , that shortly before that, they and their neighbors and their children were walking around their summer cottages and police officers drove up to them and began asking if they had seen an unfamiliar man, since their detainee had escaped and had already attacked one woman in the nearby forests. Later, Danya got ready to visit a neighbor - a five-year-old girl, and she told him - come, now we’re going to scare you there with all sorts of scary stories, and he ran home screaming and crying. To my questions about what scared him so much, he answered that there were monsters hiding everywhere, and he was afraid of them. At first he said that it was scary for him, then it turned out that I was a coward and I was afraid to walk around the rooms alone, so he you have to lead me everywhere by the hand so that I’m not so scared. I, of course, did not resist and praised him for being so brave and protecting me. His little heart could not contain the admission that this was so scary for him. Well, it’s not necessary - admitting such a truth would not bring him any benefit, you can’t destroy a child’s self-esteem. Maybe there were other reasons, I don’t know. But something had to be done urgently. I decided to start with the simplest, but very effective ways to combat fears. First, we walked throughout the house and scared these monsters ourselves. With jokes and laughter, we roared like tigers at every corner, turn and nook where monsters might be hiding. After this procedure, the son sometimes began to move around the rooms alone, periodically growling to the right and left. Then I told him that all monsters are very afraid of songs. Therefore, if you think that monsters are lurking somewhere nearby, you need to sing loudly and they will run away. It was both funny and very touching to hear loud songs coming from his room - the kid diligently fought his fear and was determined to win. But in order not just to scare away the monsters, but to finally overcome them, we did this. I gave my son paper, paints, brushes and asked him to draw the one or those whom he is so afraid of. My son accepted the task with enthusiasm, happily drew something colorful (quite cute, in my opinion) and said that these are two monsters that scare him. Then I sat him on my lap, face to face with me, and asked him to tell him why these monsters were so scary, how they scared him, what they looked like. The little son excitedly described all this. Then we lit a fire in a saucepan on the balcony, he himself burned the papers with drawings, after which we drowned them for a long time - watered them with a flower spray until the ashes became a gray porridge, and to top it all off, we drowned them in the toilet. With all confidence, I announced to him that not a single monster had been able to return from the toilet and the issue with them was resolved. A day later, my son asked to burn the monsters again, since it turned out that some had returned. Although it seems to me that he really enjoyed setting fire to the paper himself and pouring water on it. We repeated the auto-da-fe procedure and then went back to the dacha. To my and my mother’s happiness, my son began to behave as before - he walked alone, played, only sometimes he remembers those monsters, but not as something frightening, but rather as one of the facts of his past, that this was what happened and that’s all . Fear itself is quite natural for a small child..