It is truly only a dream, but your child believes it is real. So do you know what must be done when your son rises from his sleep screaming?
"Mother, help me — it's eating me!" So screamed Sami, waking his parents in the middle of the night. He was sitting up in his bed, trembling with fear, his tears rolling down his cheeks. His mother came near slowly, turned on the lamp, and said, taking his hand between her palms: "Calm yourself, my darling; there is nothing to fear. You were dreaming. Wipe away your tears and go back to sleep." The child swallowed hard and began to stare at the room, at his mother, at the toys; then he smiled and murmured, "It's a dream." Two minutes later he was fast asleep, and in the morning he had forgotten everything.
Little ones dream very often, and whether they wake depends on the "weight" of the dream and the depth of sleep. In fact the dream is quickly forgotten, but it seems real at the moment it happens. It is a hard trial; if you scold the child, you are not only wrong but cruel, for he needs to feel his parents' strength. You must have patience and understanding, however tiring that may seem at night; a gentle word, or lighting the lamp, or a glass of water you offer him, will dispel these phantoms from him. Some parents think that going into the child's room in such a case breeds a bad habit in him. They are mistaken: he needs help and the bolstering of his confidence, and he may not go back to sleep until he has seen them.
The desire to sleep at night is a natural thing, but the desire to stay with one's parents outweighs it. So if the boy takes the dream as a means of drawing his parents to him, that means his need runs deeper — the need to be reassured about himself; there may be within him a doubt that wakes only at night. The parents must be alert to this and take counsel on his behalf, and
they will usually get help. The child passes through different stages of growth, and a change comes over him whose presence is sometimes confirmed in his imagining of these dreams. So long as the child is surrounded with complete care, he passes through it as through all the other stages of his development.
The first period of growth comes in the middle of the second year — that is, the age of "I won't" — when even the quietest of children turns contrary. The dreams are the complement of this war raging within the child's soul and with the surroundings about him.