Combating bad dreams

Curious George has a fantastic imagination and with that comes a lot of anxieties. Unfortunately some times I add to these inadvertently because he asks such grown up questions and I always endevour to give him honest answers. I do my best to soften the blow but there's no 'nice' way to answer questions like "how does your body die"?

His intense imagination, enquiring mind and traumatic leg break all lead to him having bad dreams from quite a young age.  The dreams were distressing for him and when he shared them they were pretty distressing for us to. Like the big Cookie Monster who was trying to eat him and was saying yum yum. When I went in to him that night I had to assure him that the toy Cookie Monster was not going to eat Jelly Bean either 

and then I had to sleep next to him with my hand on top of the monster to squish him. 

In the middle of the year the frequency of the dreams intensified. So between his waking and JBs waking I was not getting much sleep. One day I was so tired I decided we could not continue like this anymore. So I started looking online for some creative ways to help combat bad dreams. I knew that if I could tap into my son's imagination I could harness its power to help him deal with the bad dreams.

I found a wonderful book call The Dream Jar by Lidan Lee Johnson, you can buy an ebook version on Amazon. It's a wonderful story about a little girl with bad dreams. Her older sister helps her to combat them by equipping her with imaginary  magic wands and other things so she can go back into her bad dreams and turn them into good dreams. One night the older sister goes out and leaves a dream jar full of ideas for combatting the bad dreams to help her little sister when she wakes in the night. It's a lovely story and CG really enjoyed it. 

Inspired by this book I set out to make a dream jar for CG. I found an image of a bottle online, enlarged it, printed it and laminated it. Then I went through all our recent family photos and found pictures of CG participating in happy events. 

I stuck the bottle on the wall beside his bed and stuck up the photos to look like they were flying out of the bottle. Now every night before prayers he chooses one of the photographs to talk about. I tell him the story of the event using him as the main character. For example I tell him the story of going to Disney Land or of our family holiday at the beach or of a special bubble bath he had with his cousin and sister. He loves that he is the star of the story and it fills his head with happy thoughts just before lights out. This has worked wonders for him. Having something happy to hold onto has been key in redirecting his mind from the worry path it usually sets off on when the activity of the day comes to an end. 

We also  pray that Jesus will hold his hand , protect him from bad dreams show him how to change the bad dreams into good dreams. 

This little routine is now a part of every bedtime. In fact he has started to ask for 'memories' , as he calls them, that he has not actually experienced, like going to the circus. He has harnessed his imagination and is  putting  it to good use now in creating happy thoughts instead of worries.