Hi Mamas,
My 6-year-old daughter seems to be having a lot of nightmares lately, usually involving some sort of animal (shark, crocodile, etc) eating people -- or at least, that's what she can tell me about them, sometimes she says she doesn't know how to explain what happened in the dream. We've talked about dreams not being real, and we have a sleeping bag set up on the floor of Mommy & Daddy's room so she can climb into that when she's scared. The main issue is that sometimes, my poor kiddo is so concerned about having a nightmare that she has a hard time going to bed to begin with and gets really upset, crying and saying she can't stop thinking about her bad dreams. I've tried talking to her about other things to distract her, but she says that doesn't take her mind off the bad dreams. She has a consistent bedtime and she doesn't watch much TV -- a little bit of PBS Kids and the occasional Barbie movie, but that's about it. It's just so hard to see her get so upset and I feel so powerless to help her, since I can't get inside her brain to just take the dreams away. Does anyone have any tips?
Try a dream catcher in her window....My son had the same issue and my dad bought him a dreamcatcher....We explained that no bad dreams can come in...It worked perfectly! His bad dreams ended...
You've probably tried reading to her. But maybe start a chapter book/series, like Junie B. Jones. You could read a couple of chapters each night as she lies in bed. Maybe she will start to get into the character and think of the story as she falls asleep. - We also have had a sound machine in my daughter's bedroom since she was little. We turn it off before we go to bed, but it drowns out the noises of the house, and soothes her. We have picked the Summer Night selection, but there are several different choices...Spring Rain is one. -- And also leave a little night light on all night. My gal (now age 8) has only recently asked for a dark room at bedtme...but she still uses the noise machine.
I know you said she doesn't watch much tv but is it on as background noise? My daughter got upset when we were watching the news once. They did a segment on animal cruelty and showed an abused dog. She glanced up and was momentarily upset then got over it so I thought. That night she had a dream that our dogs were abused and being hurt. She was beside herself. What we see as not a big deal children perceive differently. One blogger said something about Greys Anatomy. I can see how that would be scary with some scenes. Scooby Doo scares my daughter. All the mystery and zombies freak her out. Try and take inventory of what's around and look at it from a kids perspective. Do you all talk about what you see in the paper - like "ohhh a man was mauled by a dog yesterday . . . " You just never know how their brains pick stuff up.
i know she's only six and you probably don't want to start any bad habits, BUT, i know when i have a dream that just sticks with me and won't get out of my head, watching tv till i fall asleep is sometimes the only way i can forget about it long enough to fall asleep. that's an adult dealing with it, i don't know if there's a good way to help a child get through it. i don't know what else you can do. maybe a soft radio playing? hope it gets better for her.
We used dream catchers with our three children. We took them to the store, had them pick out the one they liked most, hung it by/on their bed and talked each night about how the dream catcher would catch any bad thoughts leaving only the good thoughts. Additionally, we would ask them what their three favorite things were each evening as they crawled into bed so as to give them something fun (butterflies, going to the park, swimming, snuggling, etc) to think about.
Another idea that worked for us (although not directly for nightmares) was "The Sleep Fairy" book. This book talks about staying in bed all night and -- when that happens -- the 'sleep fairy' leaves a small token (bracelet, stuffed animal, special pen or note pad, etc, etc, etc) under their pillow or blanket. Not only did this ritual give us something that we all loved (snuggling and bed time story) but it also provided incentive for them to stay in bed all night while dreaming sweet dreams about the 'sleep fairy' and what he/she may leave for them.
Good luck.
There is a sound player that provides about six different sounds: heartbeat, babbling brook, ocean waves, night sounds insects, birds enz. When I can't get to sleep I usually choose the ocean waves because the rythem seems to set my brain to excluding everything else including the snoring going on. It can be set for a certain length of time then it shuts off automatically. Ususally 15 minutes is enought for me. Soft classical music might help too. Another thing we used with our kids was setting the kitchen timer for a certain number of minutes. It can be put when they can hear the ticking sound of further away, but the child doesn't know when it's going to stop and they almost always fell asleep before the time we set it for. Of course the secret is not to let it ring at the end of the time, which might disturb them again. So set it for an hour or so because that's a long time for most little sleepy children. (We have six children and entertain many guests as well. By the way these suggestions can be used for the guest kiddos too.) Jim K.
This is something I picked up from Grey's Anatomy of all places!
My almost 4-year-old has nightmares every night and used to be afraid to fall asleep because of them, so now he'll ask me to make the bad dreams go away and what I do is I stand over him and pretend to "grab" the bad dreams from his head and "pull" them away while say "bad dreams, bad dreams go away" and the you "grab" good dreams from the air and "push" them to his head while saying "good dreams, good dreams here to stay." We usually do this 2-3 times and sometimes he'll point to various parts of his body and ask us to take the bad dreams from there. He still has the bad dreams most nights but he's no longer afraid to go to sleep.
Another thing we've done is make sure to discuss good dream ideas before he falls asleep and he'll often decide what he's going to dream about before he's shut his eyes.
Good Luck!
You have a lot of good answers here. One thing I have done over the years was finish the bad dream off in my wake time. The crocodile is going after the person to eat him/her, what can she do to get away or stop it? Maybe teaching her that she can think up ways to solve the problem (the person can say "No Croc, NO eating people!" as dora does with swiper the fox) could give her the ability to think through and solve problems. Teach her when she wakes up from the bad dream to think really fast how the person could save herself. Soon she will be solving them in her dreams instead of waking up.
Another thing you could do is see if there is something really stressing her. School going ok with no bullies? Is she worried about something? Could be something as easy as grandpa chomping his teeth at her teasing her even if she laughs. Dreams are usually stresses and joys coming out from our subconscience mind.
