If you have kids and an out of control spouse in your home, please do your kids a favor and watch the short, beautiful and chilling new video Monsters in the Closet. And then send it along to others.
The video really hit home for me. For years my oldest, a strong-willed, brave little girl, was afraid of falling asleep at night. Needing sleep myself, and considering myself a progressive mom, I sought out beautifully illustrated books to read her at bedtime. A favorite was Mercer Mayer's There's a Nightmare in My Closet. Despite my attempts at bibliotherapy her fear persisted.
I was baffled as she was a child seemingly without fear. Opening her closet door nightly didn't help. Checking together under the bed didn't work. Discussing the issue over play dough and finger painting with chocolate pudding lead to giggles as we created silly monsters, but the problem didn't go away.
Her younger sister, a toddler, started waking with night terrors and I did what research I could (this was pre-goggle) but I couldn't see what anxiety she, at barely two years, could be experiencing. After all, she didn't yet have the vocabulary to make sense of her world. I took a hard look at the "Mommy's Day Out" program she went to a few hours each week and saw no issues there.
I must confess, I did secretly wonder if the walking on eggshells we did when Daddy was home could have something to do with it all. However, I truly believed I was shielding my daughters from the scary things that were happening especially when they were fast asleep.
Fact was, as an educated woman who'd traded in a successful career to be a stay at home mom, there was no way my daughters and I were the "victims" of that ugly phrase "domestic violence." Our family had the trappings of a privileged life thanks to Dad's thriving surgical practice. He was a brilliant Ivy League grad. It just didn't add up.
Little did I know back then that my little ones' scary monsters and night terrors were their innovative way to make sense of Daddy's violent outburst towards me during the day... and frequently in the middle of the night.
Given the terror my girls went through I wish I'd figured it all out sooner. I also wish the Monsters in the Closet video had been around back then. It would have been an eye-opener and I would have left much, much sooner.