I still remember the first time my brother had a nightmare. I was up late, babysitting, because my mother was out. I think he must have been three or four. I had put all three of my brothers to bed, and snuggled on the couch with a book. He came out of a dream, screaming about “owl heads with wings” chasing him.
He was inconsolable. I didn’t know what to do. I held him and tried to quiet him, but no dice. So in desperation I invented “kiss to keep the monsters away.” A kiss that was magical and only worked if you stayed in bed and went to sleep. To my astonishment, it worked. He fell asleep and every night from then on he would ask “kiss to keep the monsters away, please?” (a special kiss, it has to be a solemn, ceremonial kiss right in the middle of the forehead) every night when I tucked him in. My youngest brother soon joined in and that became a special thing as they grew up. They continued to ask right up until they each hit those dreaded pre-teen years.
When Hannah was a toddler, she started to have nightmares of an orange and green dinosaur that was trying to eat her. The magic monster repelling kiss worked for her as well, but I also bought her a little wand, and she would take it to bed with her to zap any errant monsters.
I don’t remember Patrick or Willow having any significant nightmare issues when they were younger. Patrick would occasionally get night terrors, which are an entirely different (and more awful) kettle of fish. Of course, they are old enough now that they can crawl into bed with me whenever they are feeling afraid. Last night I ended up with Patrick and Willow in my bed after they woke from bad dreams. It must have been something in the air, because I had one too. I don’t remember much about it, but it had something to do with my first boyfriend dressed as an uber-scary clown, trying to get me to go out with him again.
And now Cooper has started having nightmares. I’m sure it has something to do with the move and the new bedroom. He keeps telling me about “the monsters outside, in the big dark” that want to bite his fingers. The poor little guy is afraid of the dark, the closet, sharks in his bed, and now finger-biting monsters.
When did your littles start teliing you about their fears/dreams?
I had a cheap spray bottle with water and a little bit of some nice clean smelling stuff, lemon, cinnamon, what ever the littles wanted in there. I would let them keep it by the bed and use it to spray the monsters. Since we all know monsters are dirty and don’t like to smell good they would have to run right home and take a mud bath.
I do the kiss in the middle of the forehead too. Started doing it when my girl was about 18 months. Now she sometimes teases me by covering her head with her blankie when it’s time for the kiss, but it does seem to help. She knows to come get me if she’s really scared too, and I discovered a few months ago that she sometimes sleep-walks. Hopefully she’ll grow out of that like I did.
With my ‘stepson’, his dad didn’t want to do kisses or anything like that, so we’d cleanse the room. We had him help with the salt water. There were so many times that we had to walk around the room with a candle and salt water to let him know that nothing bad was left in the room. I think it’s much easier to do a special kiss.
Oh, and I recently told my daughter that Big Teddy used to protect me from bad dreams and stuff at night, so Big Teddy now sits at the end of her bed, watching over her. She keeps asking me to replace his lost eye, though, and I’m not sure I can bring myself to do that ….. he lost that eye before I was 10.
If we are having bad feelings or nightmares, if I purify the air with sage and ritual, we start to feel much better.
My 3 year old, a few months ago, started talking about skeletons, and he kept getting out of his bed at night, and I was exhausted. I decided, one Saturday, to take care of it. I asked him what he needed to deal with the skeletons, and he said a sword. So we made him a cardboard sword, we washed his sheets, we provided him with his favorite toys. It worked – haven’t heard about those skeletons since.
My son never really had an issue with nightmares, but my girls always seem to have nightmares about monsters coming take them away or attacking. So I had them stand tall and yell out loud that those monsters have no power and can’t hurt them and if they try anything they will say “You don’t exist!” and poof they will disappear because they are so strong and powerful that monsters had bad dreams about them..lol So when frightened they remind each other not to be afraid because they can make those monsters go “poof”
My wee one is going through the monster stage at the moment – when he mentions the monsters we ask him what we say to them, in which he replies (shouts) “Monsters go way”
It cute how he says it and it certainly makes him feel better.