I’m not sure what initiates the existence of monsters under the bed, but our daughter came home from “school” a few weeks ago claiming there were bears chasing her. Apparently, they sing and dance to a jungle song and the teachers pretend to be bears. Seems innocent enough, but kids have wild imaginations.

The whole bear chasing her thing was cute until it started impeding on bedtime. On naptime. On going to the potty. On going outside. On anything. These damn bears had to go.

And it wasn’t just bears. Somewhere along the way, largely due to the wildly popular book Where the Wild Things Are, our daughter was also convinced that monsters now lived in our house. And lions, and tigers, and…

Bears quickly became my least favorite forest creature, so it was time to concoct a solution.

Introducing “No more bears, no more monsters” potion spray!

What you’ll need:

• Spray bottle (You can buy new or just repurpose from your cleaning stash. We used an old Method cleaning spray. Just be sure to rinse thoroughly.)
• Construction paper
• Markers, or crayons
• Scissors
• Tape (We used clear packing tape since it’s wider than most others)
• Water
• Essential oils (I had lavender and lemon on hand that I got for cheap from TJ Maxx)

We had a conversation as we began our project how just a few sprays would keep all the scary bears and monsters (and other creatures) away! I had no idea if this was genius or if I’m royally screwing my kid up for life. It’s always a fine line be, no?

1. Prep the spray bottle. Since we repurposed a cleaning spray bottle, we needed to remove the existing label and give it a thorough washing.

2. Make a label. Depending on your child’s age, you can let them make it themselves or you can help. I drew outlines of a bear and a monster and let my daughter color them in. She had fun googling images with me, so I was able to include her in that process as well. I’m not exactly an artist so I needed something to cheat from. 😊

When we finished the “potion” label, we taped it onto the bottle. Nothing fancy here!

3. Concoct your potion. For our “No more bears, no more monsters” potion, we started by filling the stat bottle with water. From there, I grabbed a couple of the essential oils I had on hand, lemon and lavender.

We talked about how the lemon (yellow) oil scared away bears and the lavender (purple) oil scared away monsters and how the two mixed together created a special potion that kept all the scary creatures away.

I asked my daughter to add the drops of oil into the water and had her count them. We aimed for ten, but it was more of a “dump then try not to drip it all over the table” attempt as we got the oil into the bottle. 😝

Once the oil was added, we screwed on the spray cap and we’re ready to spray the monsters away.

4. Spray away! This was probably the most fun part for my daughter. Once we had our potion, we went to all the rooms in our house and sprayed them. Since lemon and lavender blend well together, my house smelled quite nice as a bonus!

So that’s it. About ten minutes and some items you probably already have lying around, and you too can have a bear and monster free home. 😊

A lot of people have asked me if it worked, and I’m happy to say it did! In fact, we’ve been struggling with her sleeping through the night in her own bed, and she’s done that twice this week! We sometimes have to remind her that we sprayed the monsters away if she reverts to her scared ways, but the “No more bears, no more monsters” potion spray seems to have worked like magic!

Let me know what you’ve done to help your kids with their fears. Or if you give this project a try, share it and use #anftogive.

~H