The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (46 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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characters that appear spontaneously in your dreams or ones that you can make up to assist you, lending their support as you move in new directions, first in your dream, then in your waking life. You can make up dream helpers with your children as the need arises, like Pauline and Jessie did with Mr. Big. You can also try using a dream helper character named "Dreamme" that Phyllis created while doing dreamwork with our children when they were young.
Dreamme brings dreams to children and can take many forms, depending on the child's imagination. You can teach your child to recognize the "gifts," that is, dreams, that Dreamme brings, and how to interact with Dreamme in a helpful way. This is just what we did with our daughter, who usually did not want to talk about her dreams. We "consulted" with her Dreamme (a large white stuffed bear she got as a present from her grandparents). Dreamme was there with her every night for years, providing the comfort and protection that we, her parents, were often unable to do. We even went to her second grade class at school and described Dreamme to the students there. They were all attentive and excited, and many of them drew pictures of what their own Dreamme might look like. See Figures 10.1 and 10.2.
Ask Questions about Your Child's Associations
The most direct way to help your children understand their own dreams is to ask them about their associations to specific symbols, events, or words in the dream. Using the five Ws technique described in chapter 3, you can ask "Why now?" An effective way to explore dream associations is to have the child pretend you are from another planet and know nothing about what a particular word in the dream means. You can then ask,
 
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Figures 10.1, 10.2
Dreamme
 
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"How would you describe a 'desert' to me so that I know what you are talking about?" This approach allows your children to come up with their own explanations, rather than relying on your interpretations of them. This will eventually help them feel more secure in both their waking and dreaming lives. We found this out ourselves the hard way through discussing the following dream with our son Daniel when he was three and a half years old.
The Scary Clown
Mommy is a scary clown, with a painted face and one big nipple on her neck. I say, "Go away!" Daddy comes in and says, "Go away!"
Phyllis was six months pregnant with our second child when Daniel woke up in the middle of the night and shared this dream. It seemed to Phyllis that the dream related to Daniel's perceptions of her pregnancy, something to which we hadn't paid much attention. She suggested to him that perhaps the one nipple in the dream meant that he was afraid there wouldn't be enough "milk"time, energy, or nurturingavailable for him when the new baby arrived. "He taught me a thing or two," she said, "when he quickly replied, 'No, Mommy, I think there won't be enough for the baby!' This cued me in to some 'scary' feelings the whole family needed to deal with, like jealousy, confusion, and fear." After this experience, we started talking about the new baby on a regular basis. We also learned to ask our children more questions, listen more carefully, and make fewer assumptions.
 
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Change the Dream
Another way to help your children deal with unpleasant dreams and nightmares is to have them change the dream in waking fantasy. Together, you can finish an interrupted or incomplete dream or create a re-dream with a happy ending. Helping your child conquer a scary dream character or transform a frightening event symbolically in fantasy can give him more confidence in his own resources. It also demonstrates your support for and belief in your child's ability to take care of himself and direct his own life.
You can help your children understand the principles of redreaming by explaining to them that they are the writers, directors, and producers of their dreams. They create their dreams while they're asleep. Like a filmmaker, they decide who will have the major roles, what they will say and do, and how the story will turn out. If they don't like one of their ''dream movies,'' they can edit it in fantasy to something they like.
The first step in guiding your children through the re-dreaming process is to help them "get back into" the dream. You might say: "Close your eyes and picture what happened in the dream. Do you see it now? (Give some reminders of the content here, if necessary.) Imagine (with eyes open or closed) what you would like to have happen to make it into a 'good dream.' Maybe you want to bring in some dream helpers, something or someone that can help you change the dream, like a superhero or a magic weapon or Mom and Dad."
Sometimes your children may want to conquer the thing that frightened them, or they may prefer to make friends with it and have it give them a gift of some kind. Allow your children to direct their dream movies the way they want them to turn out, not how you think they should be. Encourage them to notice the details of their new dream movie, and ask them to
 
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describe it to you in the present tense, as if it were happening now. If you sense fear or resistance from your child to changing a particular dream, respect your child's wishes and spend more time exploring the dream just as it is. If your children are old enough, they can write the re-dream down in a dream journal, or you can do it for them.
One interesting way your child can create a re-dream is to tell it from the point of view of the scary character in it. This method, described by Alison Bell in her children's book
The Dream Scene
, can help children better understand the frightening part of themselves and give them a sense of control over it. That is what Jamie, whose mother, Mary, had "The Drowning" dream, did with a nightmare he had.
The Bad Boy Fairy
I'm lying in bed, and a bad boy fairy puts something in my eye. I try to rub it out but can't. I'm mad and scared.
Jamie shared this dream with his mom in the car one morning on the way to preschool. Mary asked him if he wanted to work on it, and he replied, "Yes, and change it!" Clearly, he had learned something from changing "The Drowning" dream that he wanted to try with his own dream. He pretended, at her suggestion, to be the "bad boy fairy" and retold the dream from his perspective. He put his hands across his face as he was telling the re-dream, which he said represented ''putting on a mask.'' The bad boy fairy, who, it turned out, reminded him of a playmate, said he was "just teasing." Mary said, "I asked Jamie if the bad fairy had any message for him, and he said it was 'I'm sorry.' Then he took his 'mask' off and was quiet for a while. Before getting out of the car, he turned to me and said, 'Mommy, I love you.' It was a touching

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