October 4, 2009

Nightmares

When I was younger (between the ages of 6-8) I use to have this recurring nightmare. It was at my church and the way the building is set up is the halls and the chapel a make a square shape with the gym in the middle and the classrooms around the outside.

In my dream there was this big orange monster in the church chasing everyone and eating them up. My little brother was with me and in the dream we spent the whole time running and hiding from this monster.

After having this dream several times I finally told my mom about it and as we talked about it she put a different light on things that my young brain couldn't get past the fear to see. She helped me laugh things off like this big scary orange monster turned into something that would be on the Muppet Show. Still big and orange but not so scary. She asked me questions about this nightmare, like did I actually see this monster eating people, which the answer was no. So she came up with another reason that the people were disappearing. I had this dream one more time after my mom and I had talked about it and this time it was not a nightmare. After that I never had the dream again.

The point of me telling you this is that Zoe came to me last night after having a nightmare. She was clearly shaken and upset by it but didn't want to talk to me about it. I tried to explain that if you talk about it, it helps make things not seem so bad. But she still didn't want to talk about it. So I held her till she stopped trembling and then when she was ready I tucked her back into bed.

Now my question to you is what do you do when your child has a nightmare? Should I have been more persuasive in getting Zoe to talk about her nightmare or do you think I did the right thing by letting her get over it her own way?

2 comments:

  1. I think you did the right thing because that was what she wanted at that time, but I might have tried just a little more to persuade her. I might have asked her if she wanted to hear a story about when I was a little girl & had bad dreams. Then I could have told the orange monster dream & how it went away. If she didn't want to hear it then, I probably would have told it to her during the day the next day.
    We usually get rid of bad dreams with prayer & a drink of water. ;-)

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  2. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll have to remember that for next (which I hope won't happen but probably will)

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