nightmares in 3yo - any advice?

[ArmadilloDaMan]

Thinking about getting a bright colourful night light that plays patterns? Or maybe a story tape?

Anything you've found that helps?

Have you tried moving the bed? sometimes shadows can be scary, a nice story tape may help or telling her a nice story before bed time.

he gets stories before bed but they don't help.

Can't move the bed (small room adn won't fit anyother way).

Story tape looks like way forward.

Ta by the way

How does he act when he's been woken by a nightmare?

I meant like can he talk to you and tell you whats wrong, or is he totally different to how he normally is?

He talks well so he can tell me (when he will).

He keeps seeing monsters everywhere. It's a general trend of being scared of stuff (on tv etc).

I've tried telling him that I don't let monsters in the house and chucking them out door and stuff, but I think it's just anything to be frightened of (IYSWIM)- he seems to just be going thru a time when imagination is running away and making him scared.

Does he have them at the same time every night? My friend's DD was waking up every night at about 10.30 with nightmares and she started going into her about 15 mins before she would normally wake and partially waking her up. Did it for 3 nights and that seemed to sort the problem out. No help if he's waking up randomly tho'.

nah unfortunately.

Sometimes I don't think he's even asleep - he just runs down saying there's a monster. Other times he's asleep adn then comes in saying he had a nightmare.

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You could give him a "talisman" to hang on the end of his bed or cuddle all night. Doesn't have to be big, could just be a small teddy or something - or, do you have one of your old toys about? If you do, you could give him that to cuddle and say "this stopped monsters from getting me, I'm still here, so it works!"

Kids imaginations are so vivid, I think thats what used to set my ds1 off. I asked how he acted afterwards because my lad used to have night terrors, where he'd wake up screaming but he couldn't talk to us, see us or understand us and if we tried to give him a cuddle we'd end up another scary part of his dream. It used to take 40 minutes for the screaming to stop, and there was nothing we could do to help him. Thankfully he's grown out of it now!

that's a nice idea.

he's not too keen to go into details - but will try that one.

Ta for all these btw