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For parents, or anyone who works with children, there have probably been times when a terrified crying child who had a bad dream woke them up in the middle of the night. In an effort to comfort his son, and let’s be honest, to get him back to bed as quickly as possible so he can go back to sleep, he tells her it was just a dream; It wasn’t real; and forget it. I am so guilty of teaching my children that their dreams are not important and that it is better to forget them as the next parent.

That old saying, I wish I knew then what I know now, aptly applies in this case. If I had known how valuable dreams are as a gift, I would have gladly given up a few minutes, or even a few hours, of sleep to work on my son’s bad sleep.

Children’s dreams are a reflection of their thoughts, fears and emotions. It is vitally important that parents encourage children, especially toddlers (3 to 7) to share their dreams, no matter when they have them: naptime, early morning, or even in the middle of the night.

For young children, the world is a big, vast, and scary place with danger lurking around every corner. After all, don’t we always tell our kids to stay away from the stove? do not touch the outlet; do not approach the road; don’t talk to strangers etc. As every parent should, we want to protect our children from harm, in any and all forms. But in doing so, we instill numerous fears and conflicting emotions. They have an innate desire to explore and experience their environment, but are constantly warned against doing so.

Our poor boys and girls have a lot of information to process and think about. And, being so young, they still don’t have the past experiences to draw on or the reasoning skills to fully understand their world.

Think about how you would feel, even with all your life experiences and “reasoning skills” at your disposal, if you were suddenly dropped onto another planet, equipped with only a very limited understanding of language, geography, and “people.” “. “You would have to learn to behave, to think, to react and to get by in a totally alien land. And perhaps the new world was much bigger. You would be terrified of the “giant” occupants of this planet. You would not know where to go, who to trust , what to eat, where to go for shelter, safety or anything else I’d bet my bottom dollar you’d have some pretty scary dreams.

Wouldn’t it be helpful, reassuring, and even comforting to have someone in the new world to help you understand everything instead of just telling you what to do or not to do? How would you feel if you told this helpful person that you had a bad dream about not being able to deal with all these new things and they just told you not to worry about it, it’s just a dream, and told you not to pay anything? attention to your fears, worries and confusion? I know you would be more than a little frustrated.

Our dreams are created by the same processes as our waking thoughts. Scientists can’t tell us exactly where our thoughts come from or why we think specific things at any given moment, but they can tell us that our brains are thinking at all times. In fact, we have thousands of thoughts every day. We just don’t realize it; as if we don’t really notice that we are breathing, until we have difficulty breathing. Our children also have active minds.

Dreams are like frames for our thoughts. They freeze them in time and space and give us a chance to peek at what’s on our minds; or what is on the minds of our children. When we take the time to examine our dreams (or even our daily thoughts) we find that we have many more negative thoughts than positive ones. And sometimes it seems like kids have scary dreams all the time. However, it’s not so much that they have scarier dreams than other dreams, but rather that children often remember bad dreams because those are the ones that wake them up from their sleep. Don’t panic or worry that your child is in constant terror. This is just one of hundreds, if not thousands, of thoughts that crossed their minds while they were sleeping and triggered a strong emotional response (usually fear or sadness).

After years of dream research, it has been found that both adults and children around the world have very similar nightmarish dreams. Ten of the most common topics among children that trigger a strong emotional reaction are:

• being chased
• Being attacked by an animal, person or thing,
• Fall or sinking,
• The house is on fire,
• A runaway vehicle,
• Your injury or death or that of others,
• Being stuck, paralyzed (not being able to move),
• Being kidnapped,
• Hit or miss,
• Floods, drowning, water.

There is a difference between nightmares or bad dreams and night terrors. Night terrors are incidents in which the child wakes up screaming, terrified, and in a panic. They usually do not remember any dreams prior to the episode. Night terrors are not uncommon among children and usually go away as they get older. Based on research, it appears that these night terrors are more disturbing to the parent than the child. Children rarely remember the episode.

When your child approaches you to tell you about his dream, listen to what he is saying as if he were recounting an experience he had in waking reality. Ask yourself, what could she have been thinking? Does she feel threatened? Was something or someone trying to hurt him in some way? Had she been exposed, intentionally or not, to information about the dangers of animals or “strangers,” for example?

Once you establish what thoughts might have caused the emotional response, you can talk about it with her. However, if she has persistent nightmares, it can help her to change the content of the dream. I did this same exercise with my granddaughter and it worked amazingly well:

When my granddaughter was four years old, she told me that she dreamed that there were bugs crawling all over her mommy (my daughter-in-law). My daughter-in-law had also had a similar dream that same night. While her mother quickly forgot about the dream, my granddaughter did not. She had the same dream several times and was very disturbed by the images. Her parents were concerned about the recurring dream and that she was not sleeping well.

To ease my granddaughter’s (and her parents’) distress, I told her we were going to play a game. I suggested that the next time the bugs started crawling all over Mommy’s body, she would turn them into beautiful butterflies. A few days later, my son called me to let me know that the bugs were no longer an issue; They turned into little butterflies and flew away.

Whatever the situation in the dream, let your child know that you can change it. If this doesn’t help eliminate the bad dreams, you may want to consider consulting your pediatrician or a child psychologist.

Children have amazing imaginations both when they are awake and when they are sleeping. You don’t want to discourage their creative thinking in any way. Repeatedly telling young children that what’s in their heads isn’t real; is to be forgotten; is not as important as “the real world”, we are inadvertently conditioning them to mistrust their own minds, turn off their imaginations, and stop doing what children do best: having fun, enjoying exploring their world, and living with enthusiasm. Like I said before, I wish I knew then (when my kids were little) what I know now. By all means help your kids get over a bad dream, but try not to do it by stripping away their dreams.