I woke up to a disturbing dream the other day. It made me think again about how our days are colored by our dreams – affected more than is anywhere mentioned by adults. Yes, we know that kids can have bad dreams and, because young kids’ dream worlds are so mixed with the real world, we know how much the two worlds influence each other. But we think we “grow out” if such things.
I doubt it.
I’ve woken up laughing from hilarious dreams a couple times over the last year. And, golly, the day sure felt better for such a good start. Oddly enough, one of the dreams was of an airplane spiraling to the earth. What was belly laughable about that escapes me just now, but … well, you had to be there. Anyway, it could have been a simple flying dream and the airplane was doing aerobatics – wonderful, funny, surprising aerobatics.
So, how do you encourage happy dreams, fun dreams, warm dreams?
Can you talk about how children’s dreams are mixed with the real world?
Kids haven’t had the rather fine-grained distinctions between the two (or more?) worlds hammered in to them.
One world happens at night, usually. It’s a bit more chaotic than the other world. Not much, though.
If you’re 4, for your whole life you’ve closed your eyes and, zap, you open them in a completely different place. Happens all the time.
Things wink in and out of existence. Maybe not so much lately, but they sure have in the past (when you simply did not process visual information in a way that detected the fast movement of things out of your visual field. Try it with a wee one. Or a cat or dog. You can wink things in and out of their existence pretty easily with fast hand grabs.).
In dreams, you knock around a lot. In “real life” you do the same. In both worlds the knocks you feel go away quite quickly.
Things you see and feel in dreams are familiar. Things you see and feel in “real life” are familiar. Both can be strange, surprising.
In both worlds, things can happen to make you laugh.
In both worlds, thrilling things can happen. Flying around, sliding wildly down slippery shoots. Where does the imaginary leave off, after all?
In both worlds things can make you cry.
Both worlds end at odd times. You wake up. You go to sleep. Either way.
Both worlds are regular and somewhat predictable. “Mom, Dad, I had the … dream again! Only this time …”
Remember the panther in the woods? We had the old lady who was a witch. Really. She was.