2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
“Dreams are a movie that you watch in a dream,” the children say, and they are absolutely right. Dreams, like films, are different - funny, sad and even scary.
And if you can easily forget about funny dreams, then the memory of a bad dream begins to torment the child and causes fear of subsequent falling asleep.
This often causes panic, anxiety, anxiety among parents themselves: "Why does my child have terrible dreams, after which he wakes up in the middle of the night, cries loudly and is afraid to fall asleep again? What should I do?"
What should parents do in such cases?
Surely it is necessary to understand the cause of the nightmare and eliminate it.
Let's try to figure it out on the example of one case.
A 7-year-old boy, a first-grader, after several weeks of attending school had a terrible dream: “The objects hanging on the wall near his bed periodically change color from red to black and vice versa at regular intervals. After that, the arrows on the wall clock begin to rotate at a breakneck speed. They rotate too fast and without stopping. The boy is frightened by this clock, he does not know what will happen next and wakes up in horror."
The horror of the rapidly rotating arrows - this is what the boy remembered and is afraid to go to bed the next day.
What can this dream tell us? Let's think with the boy.
What does a watch mean to a boy? The clock, he explains himself, shows the time. But in the dream, there were fast rotating hands on the clock? This means that time began to move quickly, fly, it rushes by without stopping, and this is what causes horror in the boy. When time flies too fast for a boy? In the morning, the boy says, when he needs to rush to school. In the morning, mom urges the boy on with the words: “Faster, you'll be late. Hurry up, hurry up."
What would a 7-year-old boy want? He says that he would like, as before, before school, to gather slowly: have breakfast for 40 minutes, brush your teeth for 10 minutes, play toys between these things. That is, the boy would like to stretch out the morning time as he pleases, without restrictions. Mom did not rush the boy to kindergarten as she began to rush after entering school. And, naturally, the boy's desire remains not satisfied, but is replaced by a tough requirement - "Hurry up!"
How can you help a child who has nightmares?
First, clarify the meaning of sleep, more precisely, the symbols that dreams use to tell us about our experiences, as shown above.
Second, to clarify unconscious desire and connect this desire with real life.… In this case, is it possible now for the boy to get ready for school in the same way as before? The boy himself concluded that it is possible if he gets up even earlier, 1, 5 hours before leaving the house, but it will be too early.
Then how can you connect reality with what you want?
To realize the desire to slowly get ready for school, the boy decided that he himself needed to control the time in the morning. The boy and the psychologist made up their own "Morning order", planning out how much time he would need per minute to complete each task: washing, having breakfast, dressing, time for the trip to school. This makes it possible to realize the desire in accordance with the existing real situation and transform the need to hurry and hurry on the basis of the boy himself. In the boy's room, on the recommendation of a psychologist, the parents hung a wall clock by which the boy can independently find out how much time he still has before leaving the house and whether he fits into his Morning order.
Third, mom use neutral words of control in the morning, avoiding the words: "Hurry up, hurry up, you will be late, which scare the child."
Thus, given and similar nightmares are associated with the child's unwillingness to change his quiet life for life according to certain rules and norms of behavior, which upon entering a kindergarten or school from all sides restrict the child in his usual desired free way of life.
If, after the clarifications described above, ask the boy the question: "Why did you have this dream?"
Therefore, children usually start having terrible dreams after the start of the school year. In September-October-November, mothers call me asking for help, as their child began to have nightmares at night.
We have analyzed just one particular case. There are many types of terrible nightmares - as many as people, because sleep is the mental life during sleep. And mental life is individual, inimitable, unique, like all people.
However, if we summarize all kinds of nightmares, then we will be able to answer the main questions that torment parents.
Why do children have nightmares?
Because the child has an unconscious unconscious desire, which is blocked by the impossibility of its implementation.
Why does a child have nightmares?
So that he can cope with this impossibility.
Once the cause of the nightmare is understood and eliminated, the nightmares will no longer make sense to recur.
(Material of psychotherapeutic work with a child published with the permission of the parents).
Recommended:
How To Praise Children. 10 Commandments Of Modern Psychology
“Well done!”, “Awesome!”, “High five!”, “What a beauty!”, We hear these phrases on any playground, at school, in kindergarten. Wherever there are children. Few of us seriously thought about these words. We praise our children when they finish something important, we praise the children with whom we work, or children from our environment.
In The Absence Of Children In Marriage, I Believe It Is Quite Possible To Get Divorced. If You Have Children, You Need To Think Hard
Source: ezhikezhik.ru Is it possible to swear in front of a child, do children adopt parental models of behavior, what to do if you want to get a divorce, and do you need to live with a husband who yells and humiliates? Family and child psychologist Katerina Murashova reports.
"I Have Bad News For You: Love For Children Does Not Exist As Such." How Parents Mutilate Their Children
“The youth went wrong,” the older generation grumbles. If we proceed from this message, one gets the impression that wherever we look, we are surrounded by effeminate men, “IT people” crouching in their virtual world, emancipated hysterics and girls who dream only of how to quickly marry a rich “sugar daddy”.
Parents And Children: Who Should Grow Up? (part I, About Children)
There are parents and there are their children. Until a certain moment, children are happy to receive attention, even excess and care from their parents, even if this attention and care greatly constrains their freedom - children, in principle, be so comfortable, the main thing is that they are there.
Why Is It Important For Children When Parents Laugh, Or How To Teach Children To Improvise
Almost everyone has a friend who tells the same joke every time and laughs loudest. It’s a big job for him to make you laugh with something other than this anecdote. Or, when communicating with him, you discuss only real events from his life.
