ds (5) suddenly afraid at bed time - anyone else experienced this?

[wannaBe]

my ds has always been fantastic about going to bed. lights out, door closed and not a peep until morning.

Then a few weeks ago he came downstairs about 15 mins after he'd been put to bed and was crying, saying he'd been dreaming something horrible. I explained that it was just a bad dream and that there was nothing to be scared of and we went back to bed and he was fine.

However this has been happening more and more frequently, with him coming out of his room saying he feels he's being chased by monsters/is floating into space etc.

I've asked him if there's anything bothering him and he assures me there isn't. I'm wondering if he's just at this stage where his imagination is playing tricks on him, or whether the bad dream he had was scary enough that he has worried about it happening again iyswim?

dh has suggested that maybe it's because he's not at school atm and his brain isn't being stimulated all day as it would in school but I don't know.

tonight I got round it by saying I would come and check on him in 5 minutes which I did, so he didn't get up.

has anyone else experienced this?

is it normal at this age?

Totally normal ime but, I've found that the best thing to do is acknowledge their fear (poncy, I know but it works). I didn't with ds and it went on for ages, with dd, I shooed the monsters away and within two nights she was fine.

am ve sensitive to his fears. as a child I was terrified of all manner of irrational things, although not helped by the fact my dad was stuck in Saudi Arabia for 9 months when someone in the company he worked for was murdered and all the expats had their passports taken away, - I was 5 at the time and at boarding school so there was no-one to go to with my fears .

to the extent now that I cannot sleep alone without either the tv or radio on - am fine if someone else ie dh there but if I go to bed first have to have the tv on.

So am very anxious for my ds never to end up scared like that.

My ds went through this (kinda), and we made up a story that the monsters were just babies, looking for their mum. We'd pretend to put them on our shoulder, and give them little pats. Might not work for everyone, but did for mine.

We just tried to "humanise" them.
Good Luck