Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Scary Dreams

Do you have children who suffer from nighttime heebie-jeebies?

We do. The night light wasn't enough to scare away all the imaginary monsters, and a little talk about angels watching over us only freaked the Little Man more (duh. I should've known that talk about an imaginary guy with a big sword floating around his bedroom wasn't going to be comforting.)

But we do have a trick you might want to try.

We flip the pillow.

Because there are two sides to any pillow, and one side is the "happy dream side." The other side is left unmentioned, but if the Little Man was given a few minutes to think about it, he would probably call it the "scary ambulance siren/bad guy in Afghanistan coming to get me" side of the pillow. But that's beside the point, because we flipped the pillow.

That's what's working for me today!

Resting in Him,
Karen

5 comments:

Martianne @ Training Happy Hearts said...

What a wonderful idea! Any tips for kiddos that simply cannot stay in their own beds. Ours tend to wake up and toddle into ours every night - playing musical beds and depriving Mommy and Daddy of much needed spurts of sleep.

Karen said...

In fact, I do!

We have had bouts where our kids have done the same thing. Although some would say not to reward this behavior, I'm all for making it positive.

Here's what we do: stick three pennies on your child's dresser, or somewhere else where they can see them when they go to bed. For every time that you have to go in to the bedroom after all the good-night-hullabaloo is complete, you take a penny. For every time that he or she gets out of her bed and comes to "visit," take a penny. Any pennies left in the morning they get to keep.

A few nights of this and our kids are a bit wealthier, and we're happy! :)

Hope you get some sleep! -Karen

Ally said...

What a great idea! I'll have to remember it for sure :)

Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

If only your mother had thought of that years ago...I guess then we would have missed a very funny post. K

'Becca said...

What a great idea! Here are the nightmare management strategies that worked for me.

I love your tip about the pennies, too.