GMTV Sleep Week-Kids Nightmares

04 March 2009

This morning, as part of their sleep week, GMTV had a feature on Kids Nightmares. Parenting expert Liz Fraser gave handy hints on dealing with nightmares and offered advice on ways to deal with them.

What we took from the feature was Children often grow out of nightmares and can have a period of them and then all of a sudden they stop.

When they do happen you need to reassure your child as quickly as possible, especially if they are crying out for you. You will have to stay with them until they fall back to sleep, and you may decide to take them into your bed. If you do make sure you put them back into their bed as soon as they fall asleep as if they wake up in your bed they may start associating their bed with nightmares and your bed with safety and may start to regularly get into bed with you.

Try and not over stimulate your little one before bed, the child they used as their case study watched videos as he dropped off to sleep and this may have contributed to his brain been too active and that carrying on into his sleep. Liz Fraser recommended reading before bed, she admitted it may be difficult to wean him off the videos but by slowly reading a little after his video and building it up to reading replacing the video it will leave him feeling more serene before sleep.

Liz Fraser also mentioned that the nightmares may be a symptom of an underlying issue, such as dyslexia and suggested that if the nightmares continued it may be worth undergoing a test for dyslexia. To find out more on Nightmares follow the link below

http://www.gm.tv/index.cfm?articleid=33523