Conquering Nightmares
In the spirit of complete transparency, as a full adult I still get scared of the dark, especially when I’m home alone. Raise your hand if you’ve ever done the thing where you hop from where the light switch is directly into your bed just in case the creature under the bed tries to grab your ankles...anyone? Scary thoughts in the dark and occasional nightmares during sleep are just an unfortunate part of life from childhood through adulthood, and usually reflect our real-life worries and fears.
In this blog, I will give you a few strategies for addressing those late-night wake up calls when your children have nightmares of their own and need help getting back to sleep. Using these handy tools, you can turn a scary experience for your child into an opportunity for connection and empowerment. Bonus - your child conquering their nightmares means more sleep for you!
Rituals Before Bedtime
These strategies can become part of your bedtime routine, and are meant to head off any scary thoughts or nightmares before they happen.
Make a protector drawing together. Whether your child is into superheroes or magic or dinosaurs, help them identify or create a character who can protect them in their dreams. If they love Captain America, draw a picture together of Cap and hang it over or near their bed. You can even discuss some ways that the protector might intervene in their dreams.
Make a brain remote control. You can either use a spare remote that you have lying around the house or draw a picture of a remote control together. Then, talk about “changing the channel” in their brain if they have scary thoughts or wake up from a nightmare. Talk about ideas that they can “change the channel” to, like a happy memory, a family vacation, or an event they are looking forward to. Keep the remote by the child’s bed so that they can find it easily at night.
Post-Nightmare Processing
This strategy is for use after the nightmare has happened, in that time when you are trying to settle your little one back down for sleep.
Step 1: Acknowledge and encourage sharing about the nightmare. Remember to use your reflective responding skills. For example, “Thank you for sharing your dream with me. I can tell you are feeling really worried.”
Step 2: Prompt your child to draw a picture of what the nightmare/monster/scary thing looked like. This helps to move the nightmare from the child’s head, where it feels too big and scary to process, to a tangible and smaller representation on the page that feels less threatening.
Step: 3: Help your child process the drawing with curiosity and interest. For example, “Tell me about this section of your drawing.” or “If this character could talk, what would they say?” or “If your drawing had a title, what would it be?”
Step 4: Transition the picture to decrease the threat. Prompt your child to add a protector or a special power, or something silly that can help make the image less scary. Then you can choose a place to put it so they are reminded (if they want to be) of the less scary scenario.
You may notice that all of these strategies are about helping your child create a sense of their own power and control over what goes on in their brain. Not only will practicing this empowering skill help with nightmares, but you can extend the idea of changing thought patterns to unhelpful or irrational thoughts that come up in daily life.
Have fun adding these strategies to your toolbox, and sleep tight!
