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?

DS woke up screaming when he was around 3 convinced that one of his eyes was missing!

I used to have a reoccurring nightmare about moving geometric patterns too! I was just reading this thread and trying to work out how to describe it, but you've done it perfectly.

There was also a vortex in the room of geometric patterns. And a wedding dress was involved somehow.

I was born early 80s and had this all the way through my childhood. Haven't a clue what caused it.

I noticed that DD’s bad dreams came in phases - as a toddler it was all about the monsters; then at 5-ish she went through a phase of “fairy tale” style nightmares (goblins in the woods, witches etc.); and at 8-9 she’s begun having more pre-teen dreams including about being embarrassed in front of schoolfriends, or not being fully dressed at school, the classic ones about her teeth falling out, etc. I vividly remember those ones myself - still feel unsettled by one bad dream in which I was in my vest and knickers at primary school taking a maths test! 😂

Funnily enough DD will have an intense phase of nightmares, and then maybe a long time like a year or so will go by without her having many bad dreams at all, before the next phase starts. So I guess it must be a way of children processing developmental stages. DD even had nightmares as a baby and would occasionally wake up sobbing and clearly frightened even at around 3 months old. I wonder what was happening in those ones! These days I get a long, long description of her latest dream over breakfast as she faffs around not getting ready for school 😬

This would make a good psychological study. Some interesting repeated themes:

A. Fear of separation from parent/ abandonment
(I was lost)

B. Fear of rejection from the group
(They wouldn't let me play)

C. Fear of predators
(Spider, snake, unidentified monster)

All very ancient evolutionary impulses for survival. Thanks to whoever started this one!

Toys that are alive and monsters

I remember having nightmares as a very young child, I must have been a toddler. They were of the abstract bollocks variety. Being squashed by big shapes, weird patterns I'd seen, perfectly innocent things from books, stuff like that.

DD shouted out "doggy no lick!" in her sleep when she was about 2. Pretty obvious what that one was about!

😂

We've had the recalling of the incident when the dog popped her ball, dreaming her sister was taking things or breaking things, spiders in the bed (ugh!).

My son used to to have nightmares and terrors. When he learnt to talk, he told us it was a gorilla coming in the window at night.
The best you do is reassure your little one "you are safe in your bed". "Mummy is here looking after you". "It's a dream, it is not real".

My youngest used to have nightmares about her elder sister. Used to wake up shouting
“No, Libby, no!”

DS has had nightmares about the gruffalo and also about ‘spooky castles’. I think they’re mostly based on the bedtime stories we read.

When I was about 3/4 I had an extremely vivid dream I went shopping with the Incredible Hulk who actually turned out to be quite a nice chap (80's baby!)