genetic memory

[ewok]

my three-year-old son has nightmares about owls and big birds coming down and pecking him which have been keeping him awake. It turns out his father had exactly the same nightmares when he was a child of that age.In light of the research into genetic memory ie that bits of the brain dealing with attitudes/fears etc are passed on through generations, has anyone else has had similar experiences? What do you do to curb the nightmares?

When we were in los angeles visiting family, we stayed in my house in between tenants. My 3 year old ds got nightmares for the first time. My dh helped get rid of them by explaining that the scary monsters were only in tv land and that we were going to leave them behind anyway with the "french girls" (the 2 new tenants about to move in that he had just met). This seemed to really satisfy him and now if he's feeling a little scared of the dark we just remind him that he doesn't have to worry because we left all the scary monsters with the french girls.

Ewok, my mother and her brothers share the same nightmare (a giant spider slowly going down on her face while in bed). They didn't grow together, didn't attend the same schools and still the nightmare is the same. My mother still wakes up from time to time with a scream, the same as his brother and youngest sister, second sister dreamt the spider dead twenty years ago and since then the nightmare is gone. I believe that at least one of my cousins shares the dream too. I don't know if this will be genetic or not, but I always found it quite curious.