A Parent's Guide to Childhood Nightmares

Childhood nightmares, or very bad dreams, are not uncommon and often need nothing other than a parent’s consoling embrace to remedy the immediate situation. Nightmares may occur for several reasons. Because children are very impressionable, watching a scary movie at night before bedtime can easily trigger a nightmare. If there is a high stress or frightening situation going on in the home, or at school, and the child has not been able to disclose this information to his or her parents, or a teacher or trusted adult, the nightmare may serve as a release valve. Certain life events such as the death of a pet, relative or parent, an auto accident, or a significant injury can be the source of nightmares. If the child is experiencing moderate generalized or social anxiety, or panic attacks, nightmares may serve as a way of processing those experiences.

The best way a parent can respond to their child’s nightmares is to be comforting and supportive. If the child is able to talk about the nightmare, the parent can listen with an open mind. The parent can ask questions, in a very gentle way, probing into the details. It helps for the parent to remind the child where they are at the present moment, in the bedroom, and safe. A parent can also ask the child what they need to feel better. Children are often quite perceptive about what they need. The child may ask to sleep in the parent’s bed. This may be acceptable but should not become a pattern. The child may ask that a light be turned on, and kept on, in their room, which is perfectly reasonable. The parent can also introduce ideas. There are some wonderful music CD’s specifically geared toward lowering brain-wave patterns, calming the mind and relaxing the body. Such a CD could be played at low volume in the child’s room. Because children engage in magical thinking, a parent can introduce the idea of special protective “fairy dust” that can be sprinkled throughout the room (fine sand or baking soda would work fine for this) or a magical protective crystal placed on the nightstand.

Recurring nightmares, in which the same general content is repeated night after night, is indicative of some psychological-emotional issue that needs to be addressed. Because the conscious mind is out of commission during sleep, the subconscious mind has its best opportunity to intrude. If there are issues that have occurred during the normal waking life which are troublesome, painful or frightening and have not been disclosed to parents or trusted adults, the material is repressed. And yet, such material seeks expression and release, which often occurs at night during the REM (dreaming) period of sleep in the form of a nightmare. For this kind of recurring nightmare, professional intervention is recommended. Most professionals would employ some form of play therapy to help understand the meaning of the nightmares and to help the child express hidden, and sometimes traumatic, information. Once the issue is made conscious, it can be dealt with and the nightmares vanish.

Some nightmares may be entirely symbolic and part of growing up. Children between the ages of 2 – 13 develop at an incredible pace. The biological, cognitive, emotional and social changes that occur during this period are remarkable. Growing pains, the adjustments to new ways of interacting with the world, can be unsettling and can trigger nightmares. In such cases, the content of the nightmare may not be relevant to any specific issue going on in daily life, but more symbolic about passages from one stage of life to another. In such cases, the parent can simply explore the content of the dream with the child and perhaps give meaning to the nightmare through talk, drawing pictures or, depending on the age of the child, writing a story about it. In many cases, its possible to then to alter the ending of the nightmare so it is not only less scary, but positive, emphasizing the strength, capacities and resources of the child.