Handy tips for children’s nightmares

For the last three weeks, 35-year-old Mercy Jeptoo has noticed disturbing changes in her six-year-old’s sleeping patterns. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Dreams in this age bracket are of simple events with a thin narrative. They themselves don’t feature in these dreams.

  • Neither do they report any fear in their dreams. From age seven to nine, the kids become the stars of their own dreams, actively participating and dreaming more frequently, more emotionally. Their dreams take on a more complex narrative.

  • Researchers have brought forth some theories about why we dream in the first place.

For the last three weeks, 35-year-old Mercy Jeptoo has noticed disturbing changes in her six-year-old’s sleeping patterns.

Jeptoo says there have even been sporadic episodes of bed-wetting, something her daughter didn’t do when she was much younger, nose bleeding in the night, kicking and talking in her sleep, waking up two hours before her school alarm to knock on her parents door, asking to join them in their bed, where she sleeps with no disturbances until sunrise.

The morning after, Jeptoo is given a vivid highlight of the dreams.

 “She speaks of me being involved in a car accident, or of our neighbour’s newborn baby dying, or of her teacher sick in hospital. She never used to tell me about her dreams until only recently. She is scared when she speaks, though. And she knows these dreams are bad.”

Jeptoo is now concerned about her daughter and these dreams. She even wonders, heavens forbid, if they could be prophetic.

Sleep is defined by cycles called rapid eye movement (REM) and non-rapid eye movement (N-REM). We only dream during REM sleep.

The brain is active at this time – the eyeballs move rapidly left and right behind the shut eyelids.

In his 2002 book Children’s Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness, David Foulkes is a leading psychologist on paediatric dreaming, says that children below the age of five rarely dream. Kids start to dream more frequently from the age of five to seven.

Simple narratives

The more relevant are that (a) the dreams help the brain sift through everything that it has collected through the five senses throughout the day and decides what it will store as memories and what it will discard; (b) we dream more when we are learning new things, and (c) what weighs heavily on our minds is what we are likely to dream about.

Knowing this then, how does a parent address the concern of her child’s bad dreams and subsequent sleeping patterns?

“Change the lifestyle and control the environment the child is interacting with”, says child psychologist Mary Wahome.

“The dreams are a pileup of what he has encountered during the day. So, regulate the TV programs he is watching and the games he is playing.

Even cartoons have horrific themes these days. Keep them busy with engaging outdoor activities instead. “Consider also the conversations he is having with his friends, the house help, and schoolmates. Children remember the fearsome things in these conversations.

He could also be going through developmental milestones which are stressing him, like learning difficulties in school.

The nose bleeds are possibly not related to the bad dreams, though.”

Checking this, says Mary, will check the bad dreams. “He will slowly resume his old sleeping patterns when the ‘bad’ images in his mind have been replaced with ‘good’ ones.”

In response to whether these dreams could be prophetic in message, “Not at all,” Mary says. “But if they were prophetic, the child would respond with calm, not fear.”

 Dreams in this age bracket are of simple events with a thin narrative. They themselves don’t feature in these dreams.

Neither do they report any fear in their dreams. From age seven to nine, the kids become the stars of their own dreams, actively participating and dreaming more frequently, more emotionally. Their dreams take on a more complex narrative.

Researchers have brought forth some theories about why we dream in the first place.

Responding to your child’s bad dreams

 Don’t add to your child’s fear by overreacting: If your child wakes up screaming and crying in the middle of the night, don’t respond with alarm and anxiety. Don’t be upset that he wets the bed. Remain calm and neutral.

 Cutesy techniques may work, but they can also backfire: Some parents have luck with techniques like spraying the room, searching under the bed or calling out to the proverbial monster to leave the room.

On the flip side, it imprints the notion that bad things really exist. Frequently remind your child that ‘monsters’ aren’t real and that there’s nothing in the room that can hurt them.

 Your child’s fear is real: The events of your little one’s dreams may be fictional, but his fear isn’t. Offer plenty of comfort and reassurance to ward off this fear.

 Be wary of causing any long-term habits in response to a short-term problem: Be mindful of the solutions you are using to solve this problem. Regularly bringing him into your bed to sleep or jumping into his bed with him could create a bad sleeping habit that is hard to break.

Source: Babysleepsite.com