frequent waking bad dreams? 3yrs old

[wethree]

hi,

my dd has only just turned 3 and has been suffering from bad dreams..i think. its hard to tell at this age but from what i can tell, he is having vivid and upsetting dreams about all manor of things that shouldn't in themselves be upsetting and waking up almost once an hour during the evenings.

he has recently dropped his day sleep - he genuinely doesn't seem to need it but this frequent waking is almost as if he's over tired? does'nt seem to matter if put him to bed 30 mins earlier at night.

he's also just started to want to be dry at night so i'm wondering if this new state of 'alterness' is upsetting his sleep?

he just seems so sad when he wakes up. i honestly don't think he's having me on. i suppose i could be wrong but he seems genuinely distressed - happy to go back to sleep after a little soothing.

any suggestions or tips, anyone going through a similar thing? previously, he was an excellent sleeper.

We went through something similar with our dd(3.5yr) around 3yrs. She became irrationally scared of squirrels and it was from a recurring nightmare. She woke many times a night and often couldn't tell us what the problem was, was just sad. We talked to her during the day about what would make her happier at night and she said she wanted a magic wand to make the scarey things go. We made her a magic wand and although it didn't fix it over night it helped. She slept with it and learnt to "wave" it if she was unhappy.

I feel for you, I know how hard it is. They get so tired from not sleeping so well. I think its when their imagination is kicking in and the timing with dropping the nap makes it worse.