Agh! Parenting Guilt!
Agh!

OK, here's the deal. Out of curiousity, I had put Night of the Lepus onto my Netflix queue. It's a cheesy seventies sci-fi horror movie starring DeForest Kelly (McCoy of Star Trek), which is known as hilariously bad in some circles because it is about giant killer bunnies. From what I knew, they had a bunch of little miniature sets, and they would herd a bunch of bunnies through them, and thus have giants rabbits on a rampage.

However, when I got it, I noticed when I got it that it was only PG. So, thinking of this would just be cheesy rampages of bunnies over sets, I invited Milo to watch it with me. At this point, it's understandable. However, they showed a body with a bunch of fake blood over it after the rabbits first rampage. The monster here was so silly, though, and thinking it might be an aberration, I didn't stop it and we kept watching. I turned off the sound so there wouldn't be scary music and we laughed at the pictures of all the bunnies hopping around a miniature mine tunnel. However, after they escaped from the mine, the bunnies racked up more of a body count in the town, with more fake blood. I had forgotten that this was the seventies, when freaking Jaws was rated PG. So I stopped it and spent some time explaining about how they did the effects to emphasize that it wasn't real, and we certainly didn't watch the rest of it.

So now tonight, several nights later.

Milo hears a scrabbling on the roof. We have raccoons living around our house, and we've heard them before. Still, it was loud and weird. But Milo is seriously creeped out. He goes on about his routine, but is disturbed and can't sit still. To reassure him, we go out with a flashlight and look around the house, and see the tail of a raccoon disappearing around the edge of the yard. Still, he's creeped out and doesn't want to follow it. He tries to go to sleep, but after a bit he comes and asks me if he can stay in my bed instead.

So...

This has almost never happened. Milo has been pretty much unafraid of monsters as far as I know, and he doesn't ask to sleep with us. But still fitful in my bed, he told me he couldn't sleep because he was imagining the killer bunnies because of the scrabbling sounds outside. The one thing he loves most in the world -- cute little animals -- have now become a nightmare! Agh!!

In principle, I can see a funny side to him being afraid of killer bunnies, but right now I'm just feeling really guilty and I don't really know what to do.