Dendrophobia

aka: Fear Of Trees

A couple weeks ago, our family went for a walk and Peyton started freaking out, wanting to be held.  He kept saying "Hurt, hurt!"  We thought maybe he had something in his shoe or that his feet hurt.  As we continued our walk Peyton continued, "Tree hurt."  This went on for days!  Chad would tell Peyton, "It's ok, I got ya." So every time we approached a tree or bush on our walking path Peyton started saying "I gotcha, I gotcha".  One day on a family walk, we figured it out!  The week before this fear began we watched Pocahontas for family movie night. In the movie, Grandmother Willow beats up the bad guys.  That has to be it!  We can think of nothing else that would lead Peyton to believe trees will hurt him. We tried helping P touch the trees and he would cower.  We would tell him the trees were nice and to say hi, so he would wave but still freak out.  So for the past week, I have been taking Peyton on a walk every day and now when we approach trees he says "I fine". I think we're making progress. Maybe we will overcome this Dendrophobia after all.