When a special interest goes bad!

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My daughter, for some time now, has been obsessing over dinosaurs. We tend to encourage her obsessions, let her indulge, and use them as starting off points for areas where she could use a little help.

For the third night in a row she is having difficulty going to sleep due to dinosaur nightmares. The first nightmare was about a Tyranosaurus chasing a Triceratops. I'm not sure why this was scary since she's usually OK with the whole predator/prey issue (she preferred National Geographic to Disney until about 3 years old.)

Tonight she was in absolute tears. She couldn't sleep because she was afraid to have more dinosaur nightmares. At the same time she NEEDED to read more books about dinosaurs. I tried to get her interested in birds, as birds would be a natural progression. For a little while this almost looked like it would work. She agreed that both birds and dinosaurs laid eggs, had wish bones, and looked after their young. She also agreed that some scientists believe birds are the dinosaurs of today. I left her alone, reading her Encyclopedia of Birds just long enough so that I could read Snow White to the other one. When I went back she as again in tears. Birds just wouldn't work out! She tried reading a non-scary (age appropriate) dinosaur book, but that upset her even more since the time periods were all messed up.

Part of me thinks the rational thing to do would be to make a no dinosaurs after dinner rule, so that she doesn't dream about them. Then again, I know my daughter and limiting or interferring with her special interests will only upset her.

Right now she is sleeping in my bed. This is the second night in a row she's been too upset about dinosaurs to sleep in her own room.

Sigh.

I had a similar problem as a child, because one of my huge special interests was monsters. I eventually outgrew the fear, but not the obsession. I can't really offer any particular advice because as you might imagine, my folks were not terribly sympathetic when a kid who immersed himself in horror stories and ghoulish notions during the day was hesitant to turn the lights out and go to sleep at night.

I too had a similar problem as a child but I found referring to native American culture and using a simple drem catcher was a huge help. (though my sleep pattern is a bit irregular...)

I dont think that the nightmares have anything to do with dinosaurs in particular. When I was young, I was interested in rockets. And I would sometimes have nightmares about rockets blowing up and raining down firey debris.

The fact is that the nightmares are just a result of feeling insecure, and afraid. Which for a young child, is very common. How many young children do you know who don't have night mares?

If you change her interest to birds, then she will just have nightmares about birds getting lost on migration and going the wrong way. Unless your child is interested in something like the inquisition, I dont think her interests affects when or if she will have nightmares. The only thing her interest will change is the topic of her nightmares.

Lucid dreaming is the ability to guide your dreams. Try teaching her ways to defeat to dinosaurs, so she has defenses to use in her dreams. You can do that before dinner as part of her special interest.

Im thinking along the same kinds of lines with this as Trackers post.

Nightmares are the subconscious mind trying to sort something out. As your daughter isnt usually fearful of dinosaurs, it is likey the "dinosaurs" are just a symbol for something in her life, which could be refered to as a "big, scary thing" which is bothering her.

If it wasnt currently dinosaurs.. she could be having nightmares of lions, bears or even large scary looking people.

It may be helpful to sit down with her and try to help her figure out if there is anything currently in her life which she is uncomfortable/worried about.

Knowledge is power. When I was a child, if I was afraid of something, I would read and learn up on it until I wasn't afraid of it. My big ones were snakes and tornados and I read up and learned about them until I could make myself touch a pet snake and learned not to freak out (besides sensory issues with the beeping weather alert) when there was even a severe thunderstorm warning. I learned what damage each level of tornado did, and knew that so long as I wasn't in a trailer, I was safe here as there is hardly ever anything strong enough to cause structural damage in these parts.

My daughter complains of always having scary dreams so I got her a dream catcher which she said helped some. I told her that some people think that dreams have real life meanings to them and that if you look up the things that appeared in your dreams then you can understand them better. So, we end up looking things up on dreammoods.com a lot. Now it's kind of a hobby. We also have a dream symbols dictionary beside the bed. Maybe you could get her to look into dream interpretation? Like NinjaMomma said, knowledge is power.

[quote="pennywisezzz"]My daughter complains of always having scary dreams so I got her a dream catcher"] That was my idea...

I have nightmares about my special intrests all the time. It has nothing to do with the special intrest (meerkats and lizards) itself but probably because those are what I think about most of the time and that's how my subconcious mind represents whatever issue is trying to solve itself. Perhaps explaning the theroy of dreams might help your daugher. It might go over her head but then it might not. AS kids are very intuitive. Whatever her special intrest is it will always involve itself in a nightmare in some way or another. I agree with the dream cather.

Turn it into a game. During then day take her to a park or a nice fun place she likes. Start asking her about dinosaurs. After a bit ask her about dreams I.E what is the scary part parts. Like the tyrannous chasing the triceratops. Ask her what can the triceratops do to beat the triceratops. Have her tell you stoires about different dinosaurs and how they can get away from the attacking dinosaurs. Fill her mind with defense mechanisms.

I asked my little girl about how she deals with bad nightmares and she said she used to try and not sleep especially if she woke from one in the middle of the night but her body would get so tired that she'd have to so she said "I figured if I just go ahead and sleep and let the dream get to the end, like, in a movie, y'know? That it will be over and then usually it doesn't come back. But, if you keep trying to stop it it will just keep coming back like it's on pause."

Thanks for all the great ideas. I am pretty sure child A's nightmares are related to our move. They are also because I've been sick recently. My biggest problem right now is that if I stay in the room with Child A then Child B screams and demands my attention. (If I am not in the room with A then B is perfectly happy to lie in bed alone). Child B will then purposely aggravate Child A, and the situation deteriorates. I am one person and obviously can't be in both rooms at the same time. We tried having my husband sit with Child B while I sat with A and prepared her to deal with nightmares, but B will no longer accept this.

Ah, the joys of siblings.