Where do your dreams take you?

Nana with Miss P and Master A at Green Corners Farm 

Our four-year-old granddaughter is at that stage of development where she asks several hundred questions a day. Some require concrete answers and others are more philosophical. During our recent visit, she asked, 

"Nana, where do your dreams take you?"

 

She is convinced that her nighttime dreams take her out of her home to places far away. She told me that she sometimes visits a village in the jungle where there are lots of animals. She goes to a watermelon farm and a blueberry farm where she plays with an unnamed boy and a girl named Bola. Other places her dreams take her are sometimes scary, but she meets some nice people too. She cannot grasp the concept that dreams are involuntary brain images and emotions. Thankfully for her, the dreams always bring her back to her room before morning.

REM sleep dreams are common to everyone and can be very troubling, especially for children. Some cultures and faith traditions attach spiritual meaning to dreams, but my dreams have always been random and never predictive of future events. As a child, nighttime was very scary for me and I sometimes experienced night terrors. I had a great fear of intruders and was terrified of what might be under my bed. As a teenager coming home in the wee hours of the morning after babysitting for a neighbour, I broke my bed frame trying to jump on it from a distance as I endeavoured to avoid something grabbing my feet from under the bed. I was six or seven years old when a thief broke into our home in South Africa and the terror of that incident stayed with me for years, literally until I had children. After our twins were born I was never afraid of the dark again.

Trying to hold the light- Mexican sunset

Yesterday's Gospel reading at church was from Revelation 21 where it is written that the holy city Jerusalem "has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day--and there will be no night there."

Light can alleviate fear, especially fear associated with nightmares and night terrors. From a young age, we allowed our children to turn on a bedside lamp at their discretion if they were afraid or if they wanted to read a book. 

Little Miss P. will come to understand that sleep time dreams are not real and do not drag you unwillingly out the front door to places unknown. But I want her to have dreams and ambitions of her own that will give her purpose and fulfillment. When she is a little older were can discuss where dreams can really take you when you plan and work towards a future goal.