Fear Factor

Genevieve has learned to quantify her first emotion: fear. She has lots of emotions: happy, sad, angry and hungry (for her it counts) but she can't name any of them. She'd shown fear early on. For example she was afraid of the fake camel in my parent's living room. If you took her any where near it when she was younger she would cringe and scream. Even today she doesn't really like to touch the camel but she'll go near it willingly because there are lots of fun things to play with beneath it.

The other day a breeze in our living room caused some fabric to wave from under the couch. I'm not sure what she thought it was but she was petrified. She stared at it, whimpering. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "scared" in her childlike lisp while desperately pointing at the couch. I realized the problem and removed the fabric yet she demanded to be held for the next hour saying that she was scared of the couch.

Since then she's had a few bouts of couch-a-phobia and thunderstorms have triggered her fear but she now has a name for it. We're not sure where she picked up the word from but we must have said it to her in the past.

Hopefully she'll pick a nicer emotion next time.