Tips to Help Your Child Get Over Having a Nightmare

Here is the transcript to today’s video:

Speaker 1: (00:01)
Javier Live Well Mattress and Furnishing Centres and today I want to talk about,

Speaker 2: (00:09)
well, okay, not really. I don’t want to

Speaker 2: (00:18)
talk about nightmares today when I want to talk to you about is giving you tips on helping your child through the fear of nightmares. Does that sound better?

Speaker 3: (00:20)
Every parent has had to deal with their small child having nightmares and most of the time all it takes us an extra big hug, some loving, just an extra words just to calm them down and put them back to sleep. But how do you deal with the times when it takes a little bit more effort when it’s taking a little bit longer than normal to get them back to sleep? The first thing to do is show support. So support, give them an extra hug or whatnot, and sometimes the instinct is to just be little what they just went through. But if you show support and you show them that everything’s going to be okay, they will totally understand. Spend a little bit of extra time with them. Spend a couple more minutes just in the bed with them, calming them down, showing them that nothing’s wrong. Go through the closet, who hasn’t done that?

Speaker 3: (01:09)
Look underneath the bed with them. Just spend a little bit more time. Show them how much you care and how much you’re going to be there for them. One of the fun things that came up in the research that I did for this video was to actually have them practice a relaxation exercise. And if they think it’s silly, that’s even better because if you can get them to laugh and smile, it actually calms down and distracts their mind. So a good relaxation exercise. And uh, I put, I did one during our holiday time, so I’ll put the link below, uh, and just do that with them. Make it silly, make it playful so that way it distracts their mind and helps them to get back to sleep. So this second tip has a lot more to do with the night after where the child has gone to sleep.

Speaker 3: (01:58)
They’ve been fine, but you notice that they’re trying to avoid going to sleep a little bit more than they have in the past. With that, it’s going to require a little bit more effort on your part and why I’m saying more effort is that is going to have to require you spending a little bit more time and distracting them and filling their brains with other things other than their nightmare issue that they had. What I would recommend is, um, spend a little bit more time reading a book to them, spend a little bit more time, uh, playing with them on the bed, not riling them up, but spending a little bit more time with them in the bed. Just kind of feeling things out and distracting their minds. The best thing that I saw in the research was get flashlights and play flashlight games. I’m basically just clicking all over, you know, doing all this stuff.

Speaker 3: (02:46)
What about, and this is, this is something that I thought was totally creative and one parent on the blog said, use monster spray. What is monster spray? Monster spray is a spray bottle with a specially formulated ointment. That monsters can’t come around. I thought that was genius. I mean, who wouldn’t want to do that with their kids? It talks about clearing their mind and making them feel safe. Monster spray. Look it up. It’s there. So all in all, your child just wants to be safe. So help them with that safety. Help them feel like their little room. Their house is the protected barrier against monsters every single night. Make sure that you’re doing the monster patrol. You’re spraying the monster spray one. One thing I saw also was a monster pill and what that does is it makes you invisible to monsters. I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

Speaker 3: (03:50)
And I tell you, some of these parenting blogs are amazing. So the monster pill, what this mother does is she actually uses sweet tarts or shock tarts, which are, you know, around and she has the child eat the monster pill and it makes him invisible to the monsters. So they don’t know that he’s there. I mean, what, what is that? That is, that is cool. That is called creative parenting and all of us should be that way. I really hope this video has been helpful to you. If you have any more suggestions, please comment below. I know it’s going to help a lot of parents. If we can just get over the hump, come up with some creative ideas so that way we can help our little ones make it through the night without any issues. If this video has been helpful, please share it. Help us grow the community, help us grow sleep coach, so that way we can help more people find better sleep.