Skeletons and marshmellows

As I sat alone in our living room lit by one standing lamp, late tonight, I heard the door to our bedroom close. The ghostly visage of my daughter appeared down the hallway and she shuffled up to my chair; wiping sleep from her eyes.

"what's wrong honey?" I asked

Without another word, she crawled into my lap and snuggled against me.

"Nightmares again, eh?

"I don wanna talk about it" she murmured sleepily.

For some time now, she has struggled with nightmares. She is an inquisitive, but shy and demur seven year old. Around family, she is the active, vivacious little force in our family. But in public, she becomes attached to my wife or I and seems afraid of the world. I believe her nightmares to be the "second hand smoke" of her emotional growth. As she works through her life, learning and struggling with the world, the makeup of her nightmares shows what she is concerned about; her fears and doubts. While I keep watch for signs that something serious is amiss, I've found none.

She is just a growing seven year old girl in a difficult world.

I cover her with my blanket as she sits on my lap and wedges her toes between my legs and cozily under one thigh. I tuck the blanket around her shoulders and around her neck as she nuzzles against my shoulder. We sit for several moments quietly.

"Did we watch something too scary tonight?" I say, hoping to draw her out.

"No." she yawns

She normally declines to tell me what her nightmare about. Her logic is that if she tells me, when she goes back to sleep she'll have the same nightmare for sure; as if I'm the kicker to prolonging them.

"They're not fun, huh?"

"No, I hate them." she replies sleepily and emphatically.

"Remember that you have all the power to stop them. When you go back to sleep, just change your dream to something you like." I have tried to teach her how to control her nightmares the same way I learned to and I know I'm not saying it in a way she understands.

"When you have a nightmare, just go back to sleep and..." I start

"I've tried it a billion times and I can't do it." she says petulantly, cutting me off.

"I'm sure you can." I counter lamely.

"No I can't."

We sit for a bit more as I caress her hair, silently hoping she'll fall back to sleep and I can avoid feeling useless and unable to help her.

"I wish I could do something to help. It gets easier as you get older. Thing will start to make more sense and won't be as scary." I say wondering if I even believe it myself. I suddenly remember the nightmares I had as a child; and how terribly scary they seemed - and still feel at times.

"I used to have nightmares when I was a boy, too." I add, wondering if I should tell her one, but decide it might only make things worse.

"Are you scared by something?" I try again.

"No..." She replies "it was at the Science Museum."

I am pleased she confided in me, but perplexed at what I said that somehow made her feel safe enough to share.

"There was a skeleton that flew down and killed me." she said, sounding as if it had been all to real for her.

And it suddenly became clear to me.

My wife, daughter and I had visited the Science Museum of Minnesota today to see an exhibit combining the CSI who-dunnit TV shows with real forensics. Everyone who toured, got to solve a mystery. No wonder she was having nightmares. Even as we wandered about figuring out the pretend murder case, I wondered if my daughter was too young for this; whether it was healthy for a seven year old to be learning about bullet fragments in skulls and blood spatter patterns.

"What if you told the skeleton 'leave me alone' ?"

"I can't do it." she seemed so resigned and powerless. I needed to give her the power somehow. I looked to my laptop sitting on the table beside us and began googling children and nightmares. I found an article on Athealth.com; where the author discussed the topic and gave some suggestions.

I found one section I thought might be especially good and read it back to her; tracing the words with my finger as I read. "...Using role playing and fantasy rehearsals, parents can help their children assert their magical powers and tame their nightmares. New endings for dreams can be created so that falling dreams can become floating dreams and chase dreams end with the capture of the villain..."

I looked at my daughter and she was following what I was reading. I continued on to an example about a little girls' nightmare and how the father gave the girl ideas on how to change her nightmare.

hmmm

"So, next time you go to sleep, try this. don't wait to go back into the nightmare. Picture yourself in the nightmare, where you left off, but now...look down and notice that you are wearing magician's robes." I said, raising my eyebrows when I mention the robes.

"Look at your hands" I continued, raising my hands as if I were cupping something. "Oh...there's powerful magic glowing in your hands"

She was staring at my hands, seeing the magic my hands, a smile on her face.

"When that skeleton shows up you just hit him with the magic. POOF! and he disappears."

"he's really big" she counters

"So you hit him with your magic and then..." I pause for effect. "You pull out your magic wand"

I whip out a imaginary wand and wave it about in my hand.

"You zap him!"

"He came down from the ceiling..." she says. I can just imagine her trying to find some hole in what I'm saying.

I unfold an imaginary umbrella over our heads.

"Just put up your umbrella and he bounces off".

I can see she's thinking now. Her eyes say to me this just might work.

"Time for bed" I say, picking her up. I carry her back into our bedroom, where she is luckily sleeping between my wife and I tonight.

As I tuck her in, she grins up at me.

"I'm gonna hit him with marshmellows. He hates marshmellows"