Nightmares!

My son went through some nightmares awhile back. When a person sleeps, dreams are the brain's way of processing everything that happens in the day. At the preschool age, everything is so new, that little kids have alot to process at night. This is the time to analyze what you are watching on television on a daily basis. To a small child, even the evening news could have some scary images for a child to process. Even some childrens' shows can be the culprit. I talked to my son as he was calming down after a nightmare, while the dream was still fresh in his mind. He said he had a bad dream about ghosts. It took me awhile to figure out the culprit. But it was a cartoon on Nickelodeon, called Danny Phantom. He had recently become quite fond of the show. My husband thought I was nuts, when I told him that I thought that tame cartoon was the cause of the nightmares. How could a show our son loves cause him bad dreams? Well, we tried a ban on that show, and the nightmares stopped that very same day. Even I was shocked it was that easy.

Just take a hard look at everything she might see, from her perspective. You should be able to find something that is causing it. Another idea is the nightly monster and bad guy patrol. I used to have to open all the blinds each night, check for monsters, lock the windows, lower the blinds, then tuck in my son with his special stuffed bunny(his personal security object since he was born). I told him that he was a very lucky little boy to have a bunny as his pal, because monsters are very afraid of bunnies.lol It worked.

Hi T.,

I too experienced my daughter having nightmares when she was about 3-1/2 years old. She would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and pointing to the wall or the dresser and then she would wet herself. This went on for about 6 months but it only happened about 4 times. I read up on it and talked to the pediatrician and what she was having was Night Terrors. She was still sleeping but had her eyes open and would not let us get near her. The Pediatrician said as long as she was not hurting herself to let it run it's course and NEVER try to grab her during an episode. The pediatrician said it would pass and usually night terrors happened when there was a noticable change going on in the household. At the time I had just had my 2nd child and my husband had started a new job. One of the things I noticed was when it happened it was when I let her stay up too late and she was over tired. I hope this has helped. You can look up Night Terrors on the internet and ask the Pediatrician about it. Good luck and I am sure it will pass soon.

Hi T.,
My son went through this stage also, he is 2 1/2. At this age they are little sponges. Oddly enough he was picking up a lot of things he was seeing on TV. Tom and Jerry was the worst. The day he started watching it was the night the nightmares came and the day he stopped watching it the nightmares ended, it took us about a week to figure out why he was having the nightmares. You know even having TV on in the background she may have picked something up. There has been a lot of scary movie commericals lately and a lot of them have some type of monster or person were it looks as if they are coming from the ceiling maybe that contribes to her nightmares. Or maybe there is some type of shadow in her room from the outside like a tree or something. We found that a night light worked and so did a small flash light. Just last night my son listened to a TJ Bearytale story and it was about how he was afraid of the dark because of a movie he saw, needless to say my son woke up last night 2 times crying because something was outside of his window, just like TJ Bearytale (time to put that book away!) The only thing that I don't agree with some of the other mothers is using some kind of tool to get rid of the monsters. This shows your child that there is a such thing as monsters, children understand more that what a lot of us give them credit for explain things to them on their level they will get it. I hope this good luck to you.

T.,

My son will be 3 in March and we went through the same thing around Halloween. Meijers put a horrible, scary display right as you entered the door-- "scary man". My son still talks about him. He would ask questions like "can scary man drive" adn we would tell him, No he is in time out and can't leave Meijers. Daddy finally had to take Buzz Lightyear and get "scary man". My friend told her son that all the monsters were banished to the crawl space and as long as music was playing there they couldn't get out- she still has a CD player playing softly there.

It may have just been a one time event-- but all you can really do is cuddle and comfort (or have Daddy get rid of the monster!).

Hi,

My son had nightmares a few times at that same age. He was saying there was a big mean bird coming from his window. He would come running to our room down the hall screaming. He had that dream like two times and we let him sleep in our room a few times. I think kids just go throw this. I think my sons dream had something to do with my husband letting him watch jurassic park! I told him he was too young to watch that, but he didn't think so and let him watch it while I was out. I think all we can do is comfort them and try to get their mind off the bad dream or thought. Good Luck!