Everyone always asks the question, “What are babies dreaming about,” when they see them smiling in their sleep. I don’t know that answer. While some doctors won’t even attempt to answer the question, but I like this quote from a post that really has nothing to do about babies dreaming and everything about music.

I imagine baby dreams are the most pure kind of dreams – no frame of reference, no language, no major communication skills for them yet, just pure images/colors/sounds/etc

I like that answer. Pure dreams sound nice. I’d like some pure dreams. Instead, I’ve recently dreamed about losing a friend’s non-existent child and having to be rescued by Denzel Washington. (Well, the latter part of that dream wasn’t so terrible, let me tell you!) But sometimes I wake up so confused by my dreams that it feels as if I need to go back to sleep just to get some rest from the dream I just endured.

So, if babies dream pure dreams and mommies dream totally random dreams, what do toddlers dream?

Every morning, as we respond to BigBrother’s wakeup calls of either MOMMY! or DADDY! (yes, in CAPS LOCK!), we ask him how he slept. He usually, unless it was a particularly bad night, replies in some sort of positive fashion. Then we ask the question: What did you dream about last night?

MONSTERS!

Usually his answer is, “I touched a monster!” Very simply stated. No fear. Just, point blank, “I touched a monster!” When we ask if the monster was friendly, he says, that yes, monster nice. We’ve never branched out and asked if the monster was mean because we don’t want him to dream about mean monsters! Poor Buddy! We then usually follow up that question with, “What color was the monster?” (He’s recently got his colors down but we continue to work on them as much as possible so everything doesn’t revert to the automatic answer of “BLUE!”) He has always, 100% of the time, answered, “Yellow,” when asked about the monster. His shoes? Yellow. Pants? Yellow. Hair? Yellow. The more questions we ask, the sillier he acts like we are, as if to say, “Duh! He’s ALL yellow!”

Is he Big Bird?

For awhile I wasn’t really sure that he understood the question. The answer was always the same. But then he changed it up one morning following some bad nighttime storms with the answer to the question of what did you dream being, “I stopped the thunder! I stopped the rain!” Okay. So, perhaps he does get the concept of dreaming. I don’t know.

As of right now, dreaming about monsters doesn’t seem to scare him. He has on occasion, had a bad dream that we have had to respond to immediately to calm him down and reassure him that he’s safe and that we’re right there but, mostly, the kid sleeps soundly and wakes up with stories of touching monsters. Maybe he’s going to grow up and fight a monster of some kind. Or, in the thunder and rain dream, maybe he’ll be a meteorologist.

Or maybe his toddler dreams are just as random as my adult dreams. I really think I’d rather dream about yellow monsters than losing my friend’s non-existent child. Or losing my teeth. Or car accidents. Or losing my OWN children. In fact, as of late, I’d almost rather not dream. I need a peaceful sleep. Ah, that’s it. I need to dream an infant’s dreams. I need some pure dreams.

How do I order one of those up?

Tags: dreams

This entry was posted on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 9:29 am and is filed under Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.