Anyone can have a terrible dream - both an adult and a child. But the adult psyche is more stable, and therefore the very phenomenon of a nightmare in adults is much less common than in children. Somnologists are sure that even babies and one-year-old children can have bad dreams. According to statistics, up to 75% of children aged 3 to 7 years are subject to nightmares. And the problem is much bigger than it seems after all, a child does not distinguish sleep from reality, his fear is real, genuine, he cannot forget the nightmare quickly, which affects his growth, development and well-being.
Where do nightmares come from?
Psychologists and child psychiatrists have long established a close relationship between daytime stress and the quality of nighttime dreams. If a child experiences psycho-emotional inconvenience and discomfort during the day, then the likelihood that in a dream his fears and experiences will take on a nightmarish image increases. The child goes to bed, his body is physiologically tired, he needs rest, and the brain continues to actively digest all the abundance of information flow.
Parents have faced nightmares in children at all times, but in recent decades, the number of requests from moms and dads about nightmares in a child has increased tenfold. Experts tend to see this as the fault of technical progress: children from a very early age spend a lot of time watching TV, in front of computers, with gadgets. In addition, the overall stress level increased significantly.
A nightmare, from the point of view of somnology, always appears in a certain phase of sleep - rapid (usually this happens either in the morning or in the second half of the night). A terrible dream is always very intense, colorful and vivid, it contains strong emotional experiences.
What do children usually see in nightmares? Chase and danger, death, pain, suffering, punishment and monsters. The fear is usually so strong that the child quickly wakes up, abruptly leaves the phase of REM sleep and cannot calm down for a long time already because at the exit from the fast phase the images still stand before his eyes and seem to him real, existing in this world.
Subsequent light falling asleep after that seems to be an almost impossible task, and this is well known to all parents, whose babies wake up screaming in the middle of the night and still be hysterical for some time.
Norm and pathology
If terrible dreams rarely occur, then up to 5-7 years old this is considered the norm - the psyche also undergoes age-related changes. But if nightmares dream several times a week, they are strong and frequent, the child needs help.
Babies aged 3 to 5 years are more susceptible to nightmarish visions. Such children usually remember images from dreams well, and this increases anxiety, can cause nervous breakdowns, tantrums in the daytime, dread of the process of going to bed, fear of going to bed alone, without light, etc.
Age features
It is believed that newborns do not have nightmares. They don't have enough psycho-emotional experience to see frightening images. Fears come into our lives after 1 year and reach their peak by 3 years. There is nothing wrong with this - this is just another and certainly necessary stage in the development of the personality, the formation of the psyche and the nervous system. Therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that it is from the age of three that children most often have nightmares, and boys are more susceptible to them than girls.
The next wave of nightmares threatens a child at 6-7 years old, when the understanding of death and mortality comes. If you step on a butterfly, it dies forever, sometimes people leave forever, and understanding this gives the child a sense of hopelessness, a dead end.
From preschool age, a scene of violence, cruelty seen in a game or film can make a huge impression on a child. And therefore you should very carefully evaluate the content that the baby receives.
By the age of 11-12, nightmares usually come to naught for natural reasons: the brain and psyche have adapted, and those very terrible childhood dreams played an important role in this.
In adolescents, nightmares usually no longer have a physiological and natural origin, their causes are almost the same as in adults: neurosis, anxiety disorders, chronic stress, negative experience.
What to do?
First of all, parents must establish whether the child is really tormented by nightmares or whether he wakes up for other reasons. This is especially difficult with babies who still cannot really explain to mom and dad the reasons for the sudden awakening and sharp crying. To do this, you need to understand whether the air is fresh in the bedroom, whether the child is dry, whether he has a comfortable mattress, whether he is sick.
It is difficult to foresee all possible prerequisites for nightmares, because a child may be afraid of something that adults will not even pay attention to: shadows in the corner of a room, a stranger met on a walk, a dog barking, etc. It is clear that such impressions cannot be prevented. But what mom and dad can actually do is stop cultivating fears in the child on their own. Often we frighten the baby ourselves, claiming that if he does not eat or obey, a "babayka" will certainly appear for him, who will drag him into the forest, bite on the barrel, etc.
Such parental behavior forms in the child not a short-term transient fear, but a chronic, long-term one, against the background of which not only the appearance of nightmares is possible, but also the development of phobic disorders. Nightmares, if they are constantly dreaming, are often accompanied by other sleep disorders, decreased appetite and mood, and enuresis.
During the daytime, children often complain of headaches, obsessive movements, psychosomatic pains may appear.
The second thing mom and dad need to do is try to find out what causes the terrible dream. They can be different:
- psychological difficulties: problems in communicating with peers, unhealthy psychological environment in the family;
- educational mistakes: lack of attention or overprotection, too strict education, increased requirements and expectations of parents;
- traumatic events: an accident suffered, the death of a loved one, an operation performed on a child, an injury, a divorce of parents;
- fears and phobias: individual irrational fear of darkness, height, water, closed door, etc.
Often, children need additional support and emotional help in important periods for them: the beginning of school, kindergarten, family moving to a new place of residence.
Remember that the reasons for nightmares can also be organic - for example, disorders of the heart and blood vessels, apnea, a severe runny nose that interferes with normal breathing, fever, the initial period of a viral illness. With them, physical ailment finds a way out in a dream to a new level - the level of a terrible dream.
Overeating in the evening can also cause sleep disturbances. If the child ate a dense meal, and the food was fatty, carbohydrate, then his body in a dream will actively engage in digestion, breakdown of foods, therefore, the work of the brain that controls all processes will not be the most correct.
Check your daily routine. Children sleep soundly, sometimes without dreams at all, and they get tired during the day. But before going to bed in a few hours it is important to reduce emotions, eliminate overexcitation. The child should go to bed at the same time.
Psychologist's advice
In order to cope with the nightmares of the child and get rid of them, parents will have to try. First of all, pathological causes should be excluded. Visit a pediatrician with your child, assess the overall health. If the baby is healthy, then adjust the child's resting place. Make sure that the room is ventilated and not stuffy, that the bedding is pleasant and soft, and the mattress is comfortable.
The child should go to bed at the same time. It is better to take a bath, have a massage, read a calm, well-known fairy tale to the child. Special "sleepy" rituals also help to cope - the order of certain actions that the baby does before going to bed every day.
If a child has terrible dreams, you should try to restore a spiritual connection with him. Intense fear means that the baby does not feel safe. Creating a safe space is your first task. To do this, you should reduce watching TV, the presence of gadgets in the life of the baby, silence and tranquility should reign in the family. If parents have difficulties in a relationship, they should be clarified only when the child is not at home. You should not leave your child alone before bed: stay with him while he falls asleep, if necessary, buy a small and dim fairytale night light house or a projector for the starry sky.
If you had a nightmare, discuss it, let the child try to tell, ask leading questions. Children 3-4 years old can usually reproduce images from a dream quite well - ask them to draw a dream. The same method is also good if the child constantly dreams of the same nightmare. If you cannot decipher it yourself, seek help from a child psychologist.
With the permission of the pediatrician, you can resort to the possibilities of herbal medicine, before bed, you should also introduce the practice of walking in the fresh air. Trust your child. If he is afraid of the monster living behind the closet, then do not hesitate - it really lives there. Take a mop and go to expel him from there, show the child that you protected him.
