How to Deal With Nightmares in Children?

 You won’t know what your child is dreaming about while sleeping. Or is it a nightmare? If it is a nightmare, then you need to deal with it pronto because nightmares can cause trauma, stress, and depression in children. That’s why we, as Ideal Education Point (New Choudhary Public School), an RBSE Arts English Medium School In Sanganer Jaipur, has a list of 8 ways to deal with nightmares that your children can get.

Eight effective ways to deal with your child’s nightmares

These are eight practical ways to deal with nightmares in your children

Practicing a daily calming bedtime routine

A relaxing bed routine ensures that your child sees sweet dreams. For this, you can follow these steps.

●       Brush your teeth with your child before sleeping.

●       Brush your child’s hair after you put your little one in clean night suits.

●       Sing your child a lullaby.

●       Read books with your child before sleeping. Ideal Education Point (New Choudhary Public School), the No 1 School For Science, believes that this is the best step here, as books are your best friend.

Talking about the nightmares

It would be best to discuss your child’s thoughts after the nightmare and reassure your child that nothing can happen now. Let your child tell about the nightmare through illustrations or drawings. Expressing emotions through storytelling, journalism, and art can help your child understand that nothing scared you.

Applying distraction methods

We strongly recommend you note down your little one’s favorite things. Then you can:

●       Watch a movie together.

●       Read a book together.

●       Put your child to bed early.

●       Play with your child before naps.

Using night light

A therapy for dealing with nightmares says that you should put a night light in your child’s room. Children usually get nightmares because of the fear of the dark. It would help if you used night lights to display different shapes and colors like moons and stars. The dim light ensures that your child gets fewer nightmares and more sweet dreams.

Providing comfort measures

Comfort your child from nightmares with bedsheets and blankets pictured with your kid’s favorite fairy tale or cartoon. You can also tell your child to yawn, take deep breaths, and stretch while sleeping, as doing so also prevents nightmares. Give your kid a warm glass of milk so that your child doesn’t wake up with a dry mouth.

Offering reassurances

Continuously convince your child that all is good. Holding your kid’s hand while walking or sleeping also provides comfort. If your child is shaking to go back to bed, say that ‘it was a bad dream.’ Sometimes your child will be more than afraid to sleep alone, so be by your child’s side during such situations. 

Rewriting the nightmares’ ending

If you think of nightmares as stories, you and your child can rewrite the ending. Then, ask your child questions related to the bad dream and help your child create a solution to the problem. For example, apologize to the ghost and give it some candy.

Accepting nightmares as a part of growing up

Even we sometimes get nightmares. These bad dreams are a part of growing up. Nightmares help children process their thoughts and emotions. Nightmares also protect your children from danger by creating a safe environment to work out the scary things in life. It will help if you motivate your child to tell you about the nightmares so that your little one is never alone even after the horror has passed.