In
Maxabella’s most recent post, she writes about how much trouble her 8yo son is
having trying to get to sleep. He’s scared.
In
recent months Miss M has been having the same difficulties. She has been
telling me about her dreams/nightmares. She has been telling her teachers. She told her classmates for her news item. But
her nightmares continued.
I talked
with a GP about the problem but didn’t get much joy there. It was when I spoke
with Miss M’s teacher that I remembered something.
 |
| Worry People |
Fifteen years ago, a member of my family died suddenly. I was devastated and went straight to a wonderful friend of mine who is a school psychologist, and she threw me into the car and took me to the Oxfam shop where she bought me a gift; “Worry People”.
The
Worry People are teeny tiny dolls from South America in a teeny tiny bag. The idea is that you tell these tiny people
your worries, thereby giving the responsibility to them. You then put them back
into their little bag, put it under your pillow and that allows you to go to
sleep.
It
worked then. Maybe it will work with Miss M?
It
has, along with some other strategies;
soft gentle music* to sleep with, a new big cuddly toy to grip on to, and special
bedtime stories from Nightlights books, suggested by her teacher. We have been bad
dream free for two weeks now and Miss M is calmer, more settled and doesn’t mention
them, except for when we change her pillow slip – we have to make sure that the
Worry People are safe, after all!
And happily, we alre all sleeping soundly now. I hope you and yours are too!
Sam
xx
Hey Sam
ReplyDeletewe bought the girls a dream catcher that we would put outside and let the breeze blow the bad dreams away. worked a treat
Ooh! That's a good idea!
DeleteMy big boy suffered/s from terrible nightmares. Anything and everything was fair game for the bad dreams and once they took hold they lasted for several nights at a time. The thing that finally helped was dream stones (you know, the pretty coloured glass stones you quite often see in vases, etc?). In a little drawstring bag, under his pillow to help the good dreams stay and keep the bad dreams away. The other thing was getting him to think about something good/happy/nice that had happened during the day and to hold that in his head while he was going back to sleep - two fold purpose of keeping his head full of happy and keeping the bad stuff out of his head. It took lots of prompting and hand holding initially but was worth keeing at.
ReplyDelete