Zuzu has a very unsettling habit of screaming bloody murder in her sleep. It doesn't really seem to bother her. She never wakes up, she never remembers it in the morning and she never wants to talk about the subject. Ever. But, needless to say, the rest of the family is getting a little tired of the midnight, three AM and six AM wake-up calls. So last night I made my first real attempt to stop the madness.
I started by asking what her bad dreams were about. She told me there were mean monkeys in it that were trying to get us (thinking the wizard of oz might have something to do with this one). I asked her how we could defeat the monkeys and then, in my sleepy stupor, I brilliantly suggest that we might acquire a gentle old elephant to scoop us up and carry us safely away from the mean monkeys.
No, says our gentle three year old. We need guns.
Guns? Hmmmm. Isn't there some other way we could make them go away, I ask. Guns seem a little scary.
Then fire, she says. We'll set them on fire.
Thinking fast I give in to the fire and suggest that we light the monkeys like birthday candles and then make a wish and blow them out.
She looks at me like I'm absolutely out of my mind and insists that we must not blow out the fire. The monkeys must burn.
So with that I kiss her goodnight and leave the room. And then our gentle child proceeds to sleep silently through the night.
Burn monkeys, burn.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
sweet dreams
2 comments:
Are you familiar with night terrors? they are like nightmares, but different in that they seem awake, but aren't, and never remember them.
my daughter has had thme for years - less frequently now that she's older, though.
missy
Thanks, Missy. She actually has had two of those! I wasn't aware of what was going on the first time but someone told me about night terrors after wards. It was super weird - her eyes were open and she seemed alert but she was just screaming and thrashing - almost like she was having a seizure. They told me to get her out of the bedroom and bring her out into a new environment. That seemed to work the second time.
The recent screaming is a little different in that she remains "asleep". But she hasn't done it in the last three nights since we had the fire discussion!!
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