What to do to help a 6 year old with bad dreams?

Question

My 6 year old daugher sometimes has nightmares with dragons or big dogs or big cars and stuff like that, nothing like bad happened to her where I would say it could be something post traumatic she's living a normal life. What can I do to help her?

Answer

Well I have a 5 year old boy and we had the same problem one night so we drew a picture of the big cat he was scared of and put it in the shredder so it was totally destroyed and he laughed about it and I took him to our bed and the other day he was like "its just annoying you know I don't wanna see things like that" and his dad got him on his lap and was like slowly telling him what was going on in his head and why he dreams that and our son is just super interested in stuff like that so he was okay with it and he told him to scream at a bad person in is nightmares something like "Go away you're mean!" And a few nights later we got up hearing him screaming that. 
At first I was shocked and panicked and we got up and ran in his room and he was like "its okay I've handled it"
So I'd suggest you to not tell your daugher to yell in the middle of the night but that worked for us.

Answer

5-6 years old is when a child's mind has a hard time knowing the difference between reality and fantasy. This age is nitorious for nightmares. My daughter is almost 8 and she had most of her bad dreams at age 6. We cut off her tv time at least an hour before bed. We felt it was stimulating her mind too much before bed and nights where she watched shows - even the kiddy shows - is when she had nightmares. Also limit sugar too close to bedtime, it also stimulates their minds and can trigger dreams. And just help your child wind down an hour before bed and do quiet activities - it helps their mind relax before snoozing. So I don't know...these are just the things we had to do to stop our daughter's bad dreams and after a while they diminished. Good luck! I hope you figure something out that helps! 😊

Answer

Best thing you can do is just listen to her and reassure her that she's safe. I told my niece that dreams are like movies, you see them (when you're asleep) but they are not real and can't hurt you, so you're always safe in real life even if you're frightened by your dream.

Answer

Mine gets them too. Sometimes I will run his back and tell him funny things to think of, or we watch funny YouTube videos of like puppies in bed :) I try to get his mindin a good spot before he falls asleep and it usually works.

What to do to help a 6 year old with bad dreams?

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