My DD is almost four and is suddenly scared of the strangest things.

"Mummy is the roof going to fall on us"
"Mummy is a fire going to burn down our house"
"Mummy will someone come into the house when we are asleep"

In the evening (and sometimes in the afternoon) she whinges when she has to go to the toilet. "Mummy i'm a bit scared, can you come with me".

If she is sitting in the lounge room alone she will find me and ask me to sit with her as she is scared. Failing that she'll want her 7month old sister in the same room with her as she is scared.

I don't know where this all came from? Suddenly she is afraid of the dark, so i keep lights on in the rooms she goes into in the evening. She has a night light in her room and more often than not ends up in my bed in the middle of the night as she is scared. By far the most frequent one is "will the roof fall down". I lied to her last week and told her i had the roof checked while she was at preschool and its perfectly fine and nothing is going to happen. It reassured her for about 2 days.

What else can i do/say to her?

I thought perhaps it came from the TV but i don't really watch TV and beyond kids programmes neither does she. Is it just an overactive imagination?

My 4 year old is like this and has been like this since she was about 3. She won't go to the toilet alone, sit in a room alone, and she gets very frightened by noises if she is alone - like the sound of water in pipes in the wall etc. I think its a combination of personality and an overactive imagination. I have found there's really nothing I can do about it except keep reassuring her and put up with her not wanting to be alone. Sometimes it gets better, and then it gets worse again and it doesn't really seem to be triggered by anything. At the age of 2.5 she figured out what death was and got very scared about that - literally sobbing her eyes out everytime she thought about it. But she is a very happy child overall so I really don't worry too much about it, but it does get annyoing if I'm feeding the baby or something and she needs me to go to the toilet with her. I think as they get older they will still be afraid of some things but their fears will get more realistic.

I was like this as a child and we didn't have T.V. back then, but I was very worried about the wolf in fairy tales and I was sure he was going to come and eat me, until my mother told me that we didn't have any wolves in Australia. So, she has a very vivid imagination and will probably go on to be great at English essays at school. Meanwhile, just keep reassuring her.

My DD is like this too! I thought it was just her LOL.

There's nothing I've found that helps really and like PP she gets better then worse... she's a very demanding girl anyway quite apart from the fear she's got going on. I know when it started with her though - about a year ago a lovely 'friend' of hers told her to be scared of the dark and then put her out in their hallway with the light off.

DD (almost 4) has just become afraid of the dark in the past few months. Is also petrified about the idea of 'going to jail' (it seems to be what the boys at her school say to each other when someone does something wrong - along the lines of "I'm going to tell on you and you're going to go to jail). If she does something wrong at home and I reprimand her, the first thing she says is "don't send me to jail" with a fearful look on her face. Poor little thing. Doesn't matter how many times I tell her that she'll never be sent to jail - it's clearly something in her mind.

And yes, she's also worried about monsters and going into dark places by herself. Must be an age related thing where they suddenly become aware of this - and I'm sure their little friends don't help the situation either. I know my DD loves being the 'monster' during playtime and loves the idea of hide & seek and making growling noises when she locates someone.

Funny, imaginative little poppets.