How do you explain dreams to children? The difference between reality and imagination. The difference in the things we pretend to be true and the things that actually are true.
Children soak up everything around them. The things we say. The way we act. The mood we set.
Adults seem to take that for granted, making the assumption that children won't pick up on something or that they are too young to figure it out. In reality, though, children are often more astute than adults.
When Reily was younger, she would tell me about dreams she had, convinced that they were true. The events and images she described would seem vivid enough. How was she to know that they were only in her head?
At first, you pass off the idea that not distinguishing dreams from reality as silly because, as adults, we know that when we wake up from a dream, we have never left our bed and have simply been sleeping, but for a child, it is far more complex. When faced with detailed images and story lines, how is a child to understand that none of it actually happened? How are they to know that they have been nestled within their bed instead of off on some fantastical adventure?
It's difficult to explain because you can't demonstrate a dream, you can't show an example, you can't even share the same experience, but you desperately want to put your child's fears at ease.
You want to keep your child safe. You want to protect them from all the bad things of the world, but you can't freely step into their dreams and combat the monsters that await them. So instead, you do your best to explain that when they close their eyes and drift off to sleep, the pictures and scenes that play out before them are merely dreams - imaginary tales that unfold as they slumber.
Thankfully, the understanding does come, and a child's dreams no longer paralyze them as they once did before. They begin to have an understanding of the sleeping and waking world and a grasp of what reality truly is.
Though with that realization comes another type of terror. Because of that understanding of reality and imagination, other dreams are crushed, and new fears arise. Children begin to recognize the fairy tales we embrace, and they no longer believe. They grow more independent and must be cautioned about the dangers and difficulties of the world around them.
The balance of discussing the things out there that can actually hurt them while providing an environment where they still feel safe is exceedingly difficult. You feel like you are replacing fictitious monsters under their beds with real ones lurking behind playground monkey bars. So, how do you keep your children safe without providing them with years of fodder for therapy?
Like everything else that comes with being a parent, we do the best we can. We tell them what we feel they need to know while withholding the darkest parts of humanity. We try to figure out how to protect them while preserving their innocence and purity for as long as possible because the reality of it is...most human terrors are far worse than anything fictitious.
It's my job to protect my children from things that cause them harm, whether they are real or not, and I will do my best to live up to that task. As for the nightmares, both real and imagined, I will be there. Because in the end, I will hold my children when they wake up. I held her when she was three years old and afraid of the Rumor Weed from Veggie Tales, and I held her again when she was eight and woke up after having a dream about something bad happening to her little brother.
Her dreams may change and morph as she gets older, but I will always hold her. Always wipe away her tears. And always be there for her, no matter what nightmares she faces, because that's my job. And though it breaks my heart each time she wakes up with her heart racing, it is a privilege to be there to comfort her and tuck her back into bed. She will never be too old for me to help carry the burden of her nightmares.
No comments:
Post a Comment