Bad dreams

My daughter is almost 4 and has always been a terrible sleeper.  She usually gets up two or three times in the night, crying.  Anyway, she's recently told me that she sees colours at night and that they scare her.  Is this a type of nightmare or night terror, and what can we do about it.  I've tried to reassure her, but it doesn't really work, and today she said that she doesn't want it to be night because of the 'colours' which she says are green, red, blue and yellow.

[Kevin Kennedy, Ph.D.]

I can't pretend to know precisely what your daughter is experiencing. However, what often happens with children this age who are afraid at night is that they 'attach' their fear to some phenomenon which, in itself, may not be frightening in an objective sense. Or, in answer to parents' questions, they cite a fear which is not real but which 'answers' the question. The truth is that most young children with night fears do not have a particular fear. Rather, they are overall feel uneasy and vulnerable at night. The thing to do is try to make the bedtime experience calm and comforatble, and take whatever reasonable measures (e.g., door open, nighlight on, soothing music on, comforting and relaxed bedtime routine) you can to relax your child, and also set limts re: staying in bed. Over time most children achieve night-long sleep and stop waking up during the night.

[Aruba417]

Oh my gosh! This sounds a lot of what I went through as a child! When I was around 7 or so, I would often have nightmares. BUT, when I was AWAKE and I was in total darkness, a sudden, wave of RED would cover my entire site...It's hard to explain, but kind of like I was looking through a pair of sunglasses with red lenses. I could still see my dresser and toys in my room, but everything would appear to have a subtle RED tint to it. This would happen almost every night once I was in the dark, and then would disappear wihin a few minutes and my vision would return to normal. But soon I could actually MAKE it happen. So I don't know if it was a psychological thing or what. But as I got older, I've tried to make it happen, and I can't. I always felt it was weird. It was almost as if I was litterally "seeing" red in the dark. I don't have any advice to give you, other than hopefully she'll "grow out of it". To this day I still don't know what it was.

[riona]

A related discussion, nightmares was started.