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From: dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby)
Newsgroups: net.kids
Subject: Re: Small Children and Nightmares
Message-ID: <741@cylixd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Jan-86 11:54:32 EST
Article-I.D.: cylixd.741
Posted: Thu Jan 30 11:54:32 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Feb-86 06:14:36 EST
Reply-To: dave@cylixd.UUCP (Dave Kirby)
Organization: RCA Cylix Communications , Memphis, TN
Lines: 33


In article <765@gamma.UUCP> tif@gamma.UUCP (Barbara Charles) writes:
>I'm interested to know if any parents out there have small children who
>have nightmares and are afraid to go to sleep at night.

I have no kids, but I used to be a kid that had the same problem. Turned
out it was usually caused by some very simple thing: my room was too 
cold, or an unfamiliar noise would startle me just enough to make a
dream turn sour, but not actually wake me.

It seems that most of my nightmares have been the result of my brain's
attempts to wake me from a dream I was having, in order to alert me to
something wrong. As an adult to-day, I still have nightmares if I get
too cold at night. Usually the dream starts out fairly innocent, and
then all of a sudden it has a twisted nightmarish ending. I remember one
dream in particular: My brother and I struck oil in our bedroom, and
were laughing with glee over the potential riches. Suddenly, the oil
well exploded, and we were gushed upward, and turned into grotesque
skeletons, still laughing with glee, but with an eeiry echo to our
voices, as if they came from the grave. This twisted nightmare happened
on the first night in a long time that I slept with my fan on. The cold
breeze and the unfamiliar sound of the fan caused my dream to turn very
quickly into a nightmare.

All this tale-spinning may or may not help, but you might check the
next time your child has a nightmare to see if there was some external
thing wrong that the brain was trying to warn about. Perhaps it was
nothing more than a need to go to the potty. Perhaps there is some
unusual noise that takes place near your child's bedroom during the
night. It may not be anything like this, but it is something to check.

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Dave Kirby    ( ...!ihnp4!akgub!cylixd!dave)