What do toddlers have nightmares about?

[roarfeckingroarr]

Just speculating... my 18 month old has crying nightmares now and then, where it's quite hard to wake him up and he's unsettled for a while after. He doesn't speak in sentences yet so I've no idea what they're about.

Anyone have any idea what they dream about? Massive boobs chasing them? A kid at nursery stealing their toys? Abstract bollocks?

“she was terrified of the living socks in the drawers and a character called Hangle which was a talking coat hanger!”

To be honest that would give me nightmares! 😂

Dd is four so a bit older and woke up crying as had a dream about a snail in her hair

I used to have a recurring nightmare as a toddler which I can only describe as random bollocks. Random shapes bouncing in something that looked like a boxing ring. Completely bizarre, but terrified me.

When she was 3, DD1 dreamt that a pink goose went under her duvet and kept trying to kiss her.

ds1 woke up crying when he was three after dreaming about a mouse

Ds2 has had a couple of bad dreams about being lost that have upset him.

I vividly remember waking up from a fever nightmare where the Muppet Babies were inside my walls and had pushed there hands (paws) through, had hold of my legs and arms and were tugging me into the wall with them. I don't know how old I was, but I must have been roughly three or four due to the bedroom I was in and the fact that both my parents were there.

When I was very young I remember vividly a couple of complex and really quite frightening and detailed recurring nightmares. I have no idea where I'd have got those kind of complex scenarios from. It's definitely weird. Looking back I don't know how little ones can have those kinds of dreams.

The hair mouth monster on the door. I was terrified! I realised it was his jacket with a furry hood, 😂 must have looked like a horrible hairy monster in the dark poor thing.

I remember something similar. It makes me wonder about reincarnation. Was I processing trauma from a former life?

Earliest terrifying dream that I remember (I was maybe 4?) was about a line of public toilet cubicles where most of the doors were ajar but closed enough not to be able to see behind them. I pushed one of them gently and the strip lights over all of them flickered blue and a witch's voice, behind the door, shrieked at me. I could only see a kind of shapeless sack on the floor (not a witch, it was just the voice).

It's a flash memory but was very scary.

My DD used to scream and cry in her sleep because she thought her brother was getting sweeties and she wasn't!

My four year old woke screaming the other night because she dreamt her face was being ripped off. Ducking hell!

I remember a couple of my bad dreams as a toddler. One was a teddy bear I had becoming huge and chasing me down the street outside my house. Another recurring one was that I used to turn into one of the fisher price little people toys I had, I would dream I (as the doll) was lying on the grass in the garden which was tall and towering over me and I couldn’t move because I was a tiny toy, then I’d try and wake up but when I did I would initially have sleep paralysis and be unable to move and I’d think I was still the doll. It was terrifying, I used to hide the toy because it became really scary and overwhelming to look at it even when awake!

DS2 gets nightmares and he's 3 now so he can tell us about them. He says things like "Mummy won't let me play with the train" and "The door closed without us" or "I wanted three sweeties" and sometimes terrifying shit like "I opened my mouth and a big spider came out" or "My legs are gone away", one which really seemed to stick with him was "Daddy's blue car went into a hole and there was a really big sound", the freaky thing about that one was that he kept talking about it as though it was a normal memory, and there was absolutely no difference there, it was like he had really experienced it.

I dreamt a frog chased me down my garden path when I was 4 years old.

I'm 35 now and utterly phobic!!!

Books. We have had a lot of trouble with the Gruffalo, Owls generally and We’re going on a Bear Hunt.
Regular screaming about those.

My little girl says that a chicken pecked her finger. Or that monsters get her 🤷‍♀️

I remember as a toddler having nightmares that a giant was coming to get me- I could hear his footsteps..... it was my heartbeat that I could hear in my ears. It was so scary

Mine used to mention a monster dream when she was 2ish but now at 4 it's all about sharks, alligators, prison and huge cats

I'm sure someone told me that the fear of monsters is a developmental stage, ie it actually serves a purpose. Not sure what though.

Getting lost. Losing teddy (also a nightmare of mine!). Balloons popping. Fireworks. Falling out of bed.

There are quite a lot of scary ideas for young children in toddler and pre-school books...witches, floating away in a boat, losing things, dragons, crocodiles, insects, bigger children, the dark, ghosts, skeletons, not being able to get to sleep, starting school, the Gruffalo, even Santa Clause. While a lot of these will go over an 18 month old's head, I think kids can often find something to be scared about in the safest of books. My DC found Dear Zoo quite scary at that age!

And of course starting at nursery (and being away from parents) will be a source of anxiety for some children until they settle in.

A fly flew into her eye.
A jellyfish that lost its legs and couldn’t swim with its friends.
The milk was ALL GONE FOREVER.

Indeed.

The trauma is real.

DD also had a dream about monsters before I was aware she knew what they were which surprised me. She also woke up crying because she had a dream that her brother had eaten her food (she loves her food).

😳