If Your Baby Has a Nightmare

We've all had nightmares. A lot of people still experience nightmares, which disturb their sleep patterns and get to be a headache. But how many moms remembers their first nightmare experience. Or, for that matter, how many recall their first 50 nightmares? Probably no one can, and it's because they all occurred in the first year of their lives. So when your child awakens in the middle of the night visibly and audibly upset , your child cannot tell you what happened, so you have no way of knowing whether it WAS a nightmare that awakened the baby in the first place!
If the child were older and could tell you so, and you knew it was a nightmare for sure, it would be much easier to proceed with your consoling. So what to do? What are the signs?
One way to figure out whether the baby has had a nightmare is to take note of her regular sleep patterns. Then make certain the baby isn't sick or ill with fever, causing wakefulness. If the baby awakens suddenly at a time when she is most often sound asleep and then resists attempts to soothe her back to sleep, odds are she may have just experienced a nightmare. Adults usually dream most vividly after one half-awake period in the middle of the night, and babies are no different. If your child sleeps through the night, the nightmares could happen in the very early morning hours.
So if the signals are there and you believe it's a nightmare you're dealing with, one possible reason could be separation anxiety. If the baby is away from the parent for too long, it will create stress, which is a leading cause of nightmares at any age. Another reason, also a cause of nightmares throughout out lives, is the result of something disquieting or upsetting witnessed by the baby occurring somewhere close to bedtime. So whatever the reason, you've now encountered an agitated child who won't go back to sleep so easily.
Now back up a bit if you think the quick answer is to take the weepy toddler into your own bed. It could very well work as a short-term fix. But it's generally known that the child could get too attached to the option. Try staying with the baby, talking to reassure, and don't forget the all-important therapy of physical reassurance. Hold, stroke and rock the child until the terror has lifted and the good night's sleep can be resumed.

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Do Your Kids Have Fear of Flying?

Most kids are not born with a fear of flying but looking at footage of things like the 9/11 disaster gives them the idea. I blame a lot of the fear that kids have of flying on watching too much reality television in general.
The majority of children do not have a natural fear of flying, so unless your child has previously been involved in a flying situation that was traumatic or scary, it is likely that there is some other underlying reason if your child is scared of flying. In fact child psychologists say that many times the fear of flying has nothing at all to do with your kid's
Sometimes, children will have exactly the same scenario in their life as highlighted in the previous section of this report. Something bad happens in their life and they transferred the negative feelings about whatever it was that happened to flying.
For instance, in a modern world where divorce is becoming increasingly common, it is not especially unusual for children to have to fly from one estranged parent to visit the other. In this scenario, it is fairly obvious that the child involved will have mixed or negative emotions and not unnaturally, these negative emotions could very easily be transferred to the process of flying itself.
It is also a fact that children are often very well tuned to their parents emotions and feelings, so if you feel somehow upset or concerned about flying, it is quite likely that your children will feel exactly the same as a reflection of your psychological mien.
So, if your child starts to exhibit signs of being scared of flying, consider whether there is anything in the surrounding psychological situation that could be causing them to feel this way.
Air travel is a fact of modern life, something that even the youngest child now takes for granted. If you want to get from point A to point B, flying is generally the quickest option – sometimes the only option, especially if it involves overseas travel – and with prices at an all time low, anyone and everyone can fly nowadays.
This ability to jet off to all corners of the globe is one that has allowed people greater travel freedoms than they have ever had before, but for some, this freedom comes with a price tag attached. Not everyone is a good flyer, and certainly, not everyone actually enjoys flying.
For instance, whilst statistics compiled by the US Department of Transport suggest that flying is 29 times safer than travelling in an automobile, many people are simply terrified of getting on a plane ever.
If you want your kid to be okay psychologically on a plane just explain the odds of an accident happening in plain English. This should allay the fears that have been instilled in the kid by the media.

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