Helping with a fear of the vacuum cleaner

Luath has developed a fear of the vacuum cleaner.  She has never had any issues with it before and actually used to love helping me with it.  As it is difficult to know how long her fear will take to pass and we need to vacuum the living room floor most days we have tried a few ways to help but at the same time trying not to make a big deal of her fear.   These weren’t all done on the same day.

Vacuuming when she is elsewhere/occupied
One of us has taken her outside or to another room while the other vacuums.
Leaving the living room door open so she could leave the room, which she hasn’t chosen to do.
No matter how occupied she is she will stop when the vacuum appears.  I have brought the vacuum into the room and left it sitting without switching on so she doesn’t immediately start getting anxious when she sees it.
Acknowledging her fear
Saying that we know the vacuum makes her scared.  Her main concern seems to be it might hoover her up.
Asking how I could help.  Offering suggestions like she could hold my hand, hold the wire, push the vacuum.
Making it friendly
While we were at the leisure centre one of the attendants was about to vacuum.  Luath came over to me and asked to come up into my arms.  The vacuum was one of the ones with eyes and is quiet. Very quickly Luath came down from my arms and happily played as the vacuum went past her.  She even said “He’s (vacuum) friendly”.  I thought we would try giving our vacuum a more friendly look.  We looked through a sticker book of monster faces to choose which type of eyes, nose and mouth Luath wanted.

Luath placed each part and then helped tape them onto the vacuum.

Our now friendly looking vacuum.  When we were done she asked for it to be put back where it belonged – her way of saying “don’t switch it on now”
 
Role playing
At Christmas my dad made a fun vacuum out of wooden construction pieces, which she still often talks about.  So we did some pretend vacuuming.
Seeing how it works
She helped me empty the container. 

I took the different parts of the vacuum out and we investigated them.
I had Luath sprinkle some seeds onto the floor and watch how the vacuum picked them up – she thought this was great and was laughing.  Once the seeds were all gone she wanted the vacuum switched off.
I tried to muffle the sound by wrapping the vacuum in a thick blanket as I think the noise is an aspect in her fear.
Experiment
As her main fear seems to be a thought of getting sucked up I showed it going on my foot, holding the nozzle to my hand.

Results
Luath still is very wary of the vacuum coming out. I think it’ll just take time.  She is very happy to have conversations with our friendly vacuum and even talking to it about being scared of it.

(Luath is 27 months)