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Behaviour/development

Talk to others about child development and behaviour stages here. You can find more information on our development calendar.

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Original poster

My 3 year old is having nightmares.

7 replies

violetbeth · 08/05/2011 17:45

My 3 year old DD has started having nightmares. They are about Dragons and I have no idea where they have come from. She is an only 1 so no sibling influence. It has started waking her up in the night now and she mentions them in the day, what should I do, talk about it? ignore it? dismiss it? Any help will be great.

OP posts:

Beamur · 08/05/2011 19:08

Could it be night terrors?

Mollymax · 08/05/2011 19:08

Not a great deal of help, but, at the age of three they have such an active imagination and begin to have nightmares.
Personally i would play it down, nice quiet bedtime routine lots of reassurance that it is only bad dreams.

strandednomore · 08/05/2011 19:11

Dd2 (3.5) has a lot of nightmares and has done for a while. For ages we couldn't read any books containing crocodiles, sharks or any other vaguely scary animals because this is what she was dreaming about. I just comfort her in the night (actually let her sleep in our bed, which I am sure will get lots of tuts) and slowly she seems to be dealing with them better. It's not something they grow out of quickly though as dd1 (5) still has a lot of bad dreams - but she is better at going back to sleep independently than she used to be.
I am sure it's a sig of great imagination though, if that makes you feel any better

Filmbuffmum · 08/05/2011 19:22

DS1 went through a spell of this- waking us up almost every night. I downloaded very impressive looking instructions on making a dream catcher from the Internet, and one of his lovely preschool teachers told him that would definitely work, and made a beautiful one the same day. We still have the odd comment about bad dreams, but not nearly so much waking or so many problems!

Ginabraz · 08/05/2011 19:24

I believe this is normal for the age. My DS started them around the same age the culprits were Iggle Piggle's moo, crocodiles and lastly the strange one - strawberries! I think the red things must have resembled the blood after the croc bit him. He would come to our bed and snuggle in quietly. This does become an issue and I have recently resolved the bed sharing by asking him what he wants to do the next day and fulfilling it, if reasonable. Sometimes they can be so worked up and scared that they are not even really awake which makes for a strange evening for all.

Mummyloveskisses · 08/05/2011 20:54

Does she spend any time away from you, like nursery or childminders? I only ask as my daughter is 3 also and is facinated with the dragon in the book Room on the Broom.... thankfully she isn't scared by it but she does talk about it more than the rest of the book.

I was thinking someone might have read her it or a similar book x

strandednomore · 08/05/2011 21:10

Watch out - it was either the dragon or the "monster" made out of the cat, dog, frog etc in Room on the Broom that set off dd1's nightmares when she was about 3. Took us a long time to be able to read that book again....

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