In her own special way Sally has made her way back into our lives. You remember Sally, right? Well she burned her parent's house down...with them in it. Ever since then Maura has had an intense fear of fire. It calmed down for awhile but the past few weeks she wakes up (or never goes to sleep) crying that she keeps thinking we will die in a fire. I thought it would make it better to make an "escape plan" and talk about how we would stay safe if we did have a fire. That just made it worse. Any advice on how to handle nightmares? Preferably advice that doesn't involve me sleeping in a twin bed with a 6 year old all night.
Darn you Sally!
5 comments:
Sometimes I let Jefferson fall asleep to the TV. But I have to make sure the show he is watching is kind of boring...like Curious George or something he doesn't really like that much. It takes his mind off his dream enough to fall asleep, but he's not interested in the show enough to stay awake all night.
Our oldest two both had night terrors. They would even look awake (ie..eyes open, screaming, sometimes kicking, and still not really awake) and we had a hard few years. Then one night Timothy suggested Ryan put a "magic sock" under his pillow. It would get rid of the nightmares. And if the nightmares came anyway, he could slip his hand into that magic sock under his pillow and it would make him feel better.
Somehow it worked. As part of the bedtime routine, the older two would place a single "magic" sock under their pillow each night. If by chance the sock didn't put their minds at ease and they still had a nightmare, they would wake up enough to put the sock on their hand and then fall back asleep.
I hope you find some trick to help. It is so hard when they are scared and you just. want. to. sleep!!!!!!
Good ideas. I told her to think of a good thought, but she said the bad thoughts are stronger and won't let the good thoughts in. For heaven's sake, she is 6 years old! I might try the magic sock tonight!
I must have missed something, what makes the sock magic?
I love the magic sock! We always just told our children to turn their pillow over and that generally seemed to work
Post a Comment