Dealing with Nightmares

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Posted 2022-10-08 by Chandra Clements ⇒ follow

I can remember struggling with nightmares as a young child. This makes it harder to watch your little ones fret in the night for the same reason. You know the fear. You remember the fear. And as a mum, you would try anything to stop the anxiety in your children.

I won't delve into the neuroscience of fears, so far as to say that there are many reasons why young children experience recurring and disturbing nightmares. It is one of those things that can be highly personal and cause varying levels of discomfort to kids. For some, it can be sporadic. For others, persistent.

On a recent trip to the discount store, I stumbled across a Make Your Own Dream Catcher kit. It was $5. Given my seven and five-year-old girls had been experiencing distressing nightmares, I picked it up thinking "why not?". I didn't realize this would be one of those rare times when I would nail it as a mother!

I gave the kit to Miss Five while her sister was at school. We had a great afternoon webbing the face of the dream catcher and coloring in stars on the frame. We glued a unicorn on the front and hung multi-colored ribbons from the base. A touch of glimmer to anything never goes astray and whalla! - we had ourselves a pretty impressive dream catcher. I explained to Miss Five that this was a very special creation and it would, from this point forward, catch all the yukky dreams and guide the beautiful ones through.

There is a lot to be said about the power of the mind. Once my girl was convinced this device was on her side, she never looked back. She hung it proudly over the head of her bed and believes it to be one of the most important assets she owns. Every morning when she wakes, I get an update on how many nightmares it caught and how wonderful her dreams were instead. This led to the need for mummy to zip back to the discount store to purchase one for Miss Seven. Wouldn't you know it - the result has been identical for her too.

Big W currently has a kit for $10 you can get your hands on or I recommend searching your local discount outlet. Having the kids make their own seems to add an important psychological step to the approach and is a great way to spend a lazy afternoon. I found it quite relaxing helping web the catcher and anything that relaxes a busy mum has to be a good thing! We now have two beautiful dream catchers in the house and two happy, practically nightmare-free, little girls.