Mindee Confused about Fire

[EmmaReed84]

I recently posted about a mindee of mine who was a little scared of leaving the house when doing a fire drill, he also cried when I asked him what to do in a fire. I spoke to mum and we agreed a plan of action as he will be starting play school soon and their fire drills are far more loud than my "Oh dear I smell smoke"

We have been casually talking about Fireman Sam and dropping little things in here and there nothing over the top just very very casual. He seemed to get better about it and the other day we were watching Fireman Sam and there was a fire and I said "Oh what should he do?" and Mindee smiled and said "Get out the house, fire!" So far so good 1 week till our next fire drill!

However, mum just dropped mindee off and said that she took her car through the car wash and mindee got very funny about it started crying for his dad saying "fire, get out!"

What can I do to help mindee I feel awful that he was so scared and seemed to have linked the carwash to fire?

[Jiorjiina]

Is it possible he confused the bubbles with smoke?

Could you talk to him and see what he thought was happening when the car went through the car wash?

Perhaps you could do some 'getting out of the house' drills, without actually mentioning fire?

[JCrakers]

I had this problem about 3yrs ago with a mindee. It totally freaked him out and he was affected for ages, at night too, when he went home. He thought the alarm was going to go off and he was basically waitng for it to go off...he couldnt sleep.

From then on I dont shout anything....I explain to the older ones that when the smoke alarm goes off we all make our way to the front door and wait for me. They all know what to do. They are all old enough to understand as they do it at school.

With the younger ones, they always need help anyway so I help them to the door explaining that we need to get outside because the alarm has gone of and there might be a fire. I dont shout or make any alaming noises. Its all pretty calm.

As long as the older ones know what to do and I can safely usher the younger ones out, Im assured that if there was a fire I could manage all the children.

Becky