Punch a Hole in the World: Listening to Children’s Dreams

 

Young children know how to go to Magic Kingdoms without paying for tickets, because they are at home in the imagination and live close to their dreams. When she was very young, my daughter Sophie had adventures in a special place called Teddy Bear Land, where she met a special friend. I loved hearing about these travels, and encouraged her to make drawings and spin further stories from them. 

One day Sophie sat down beside me and asked with great earnestness, "Daddy, would you like to know how I get to Teddy Bear Land?"

 "I'd love to."

 "Sometimes I take the Sun Gate. Sometimes I take the Moon Gate. Sometimes I take the Tree Gate. Sometimes I take the Rainbow Bridge. And sometimes I just punch a hole in the world." 

I've never heard anyone say it better. To live the larger life. we need to punch a hole in the world. This is what dreaming - sleeping or waking or hyper-awake - is really all about. On our roads to adulthood, we sometimes forget how to do it, just as older children in the Chronicles of Narnia cease to be able to see Aslan as they approach adolescence and become more and more burdened by the reality definitions of the grown-ups around them. 

When we listen, truly listen, to very young children, we start to remember that the distance between us and the Magic Kingdoms is no wider than the edge of a sleep mask. True listening requires us to pay attention; to attend, in its root meaning in the Latin, is to stretch ourselves, which requires us to expand our vocabulary of understanding. We owe nothing less to the young children in our lives. When we do this, we discover that they can be our very best teachers on how to dream and what dreaming can be. 

Here's what we need to know about listening to children's dreams and supporting their imaginations: 

1. Listen up! When a child wants to tell a dream, make room for that. Make some daily space for dream sharing. Listen to the stories and cherish them for their own sake. 

2. Invite good dreams Pick the right bedtime reading or better still, tell stories. Help your child to weave a web of good dream intentions for the night - for example, by asking "What would you most like to do tonight?" Encourage children to sleep with a favorite stuffed animal (whether teddy bear or T-Rex) and make this a dream guardian. 

3. Provide immediate help with the scary stuff If your child was scared by something in the night, recognize you are the ally the child needs right now. Do something right away to move out that negative energy. Get a frightened child to spit it out (literally) or draw a picture of what scared her and tear it up as violently as possible. 

4. Ask good questions. When the child has told her story, ask good questions. Ask about feelings, about the color of the sky, and about exactly what T-Rex was doing. See if there's something about the future. Say what you would think about this if this were your dream. Always come up with something fun or helpful to do with this story. Open up the crayon box, call grandma, etc. 

5. Help the child to keep a dream journal. Get this started as early as possible. With a very young child, you can help with the words while they do the pictures. When your child reaches the point where she closes the journal and says, "This is my secret book and you can't read it any more" do not peek. Give her privacy, and let her choose when she'll let you look in that magic book. 

6. Provide tools for creative expression. Encourage the child to bring dreams come alive through art, dance, theater and games, and to draw or paint dreams. Gather friends and family for dream-inspired games and performance. Puppets and stuffed animals can be great for acting out dreams. This can also be dress-up time. It's such a release for kids to portray mom or dad or other grown-ups in their lives - be ready to be shocked! 

7. Help construct effective action plans Dreams can show us things that require further action - for example, to avoid an unhappy future event that was previewed in the dream, or to put something right in a family situation. A child will probably need adult help with such things, starting with your help. may require adult help, starting with yours. This will eventually require you to learn more about dreaming and dreamwork (hint: you can start with my books).

 8. Let your own inner child out to play As you listen to children's dreams, let the wonderful child dreamer inside you come out and join in the play. 

9. Keep it fun! When you get the hang of this, you'll find it's about the best home entertainment you can enjoy. 

Notice two things that are not on this list, but would be at the very top of a list of what not to do with your children's dreams: 

1. NEVER say to a child "It's only a dream". Children know that dreams are for real and that scary stuff that comes out in dreams needs to be resolved, not dismissed.

2. DON'T INTERPRET a child's dreams. You are not the expert here; the child is.

Text adapted from Active Dreaming by Robert Moss

Photo by RM

 

Punch a Hole in the World: Listening to Children's Dreams

Young children know how to go to Magic Kingdoms without paying for tickets, because they are at home in the imagination and live close to their dreams. When she was very young, my daughter Sophie had adventures in a special place called Teddy Bear Land, where she met a special friend. I loved hearing about these travels, and encouraged her to make drawings and spin further stories from them.

One day Sophie sat down beside me and asked with great earnestness, "Daddy, would you like to know how I get to Teddy Bear Land?"

 "I'd love to."

 "Sometimes I take the Sun Gate. Sometimes I take the Moon Gate. Sometimes I take the Tree Gate. Sometimes I take the Rainbow Bridge. And sometimes I just punch a hole in the world."

I've never heard anyone say it better. To live the larger life. we need to punch a hole in the world. This is what dreaming - sleeping or waking or hyper-awake - is really all about. On our roads to adulthood, we sometimes forget how to do it, just as older children in the Chronicles of Narnia cease to be able to see Aslan as they approach adolescence and become more and more burdened by the reality definitions of the grown-ups around them.

When we listen, truly listen, to very young children, we start to remember that the distance between us and the Magic Kingdoms is no wider than the edge of a sleep mask. True listening requires us to pay attention; to attend, in its root meaning in the Latin, is to stretch ourselves, which requires us to expand our vocabulary of understanding. We owe nothing less to the young children in our lives. When we do this, we discover that they can be our very best teachers on how to dream and what dreaming can be.

Here's what we need to know about listening to children's dreams and supporting their imaginations:

1. Listen up! When a child wants to tell a dream, make room for that. Make some daily space for dream sharing. Listen to the stories and cherish them for their own sake.

2. Invite good dreams Pick the right bedtime reading or better still, tell stories. Help your child to weave a web of good dream intentions for the night - for example, by asking "What would you most like to do tonight?" Encourage children to sleep with a favorite stuffed animal (whether teddy bear or T-Rex) and make this a dream guardian.

3. Provide immediate help with the scary stuff If your child was scared by something in the night, recognize you are the ally the child needs right now. Do something right away to move out that negative energy. Get a frightened child to spit it out (literally) or draw a picture of what scared her and tear it up as violently as possible.

4. Ask good questions. When the child has told her story, ask good questions. Ask about feelings, about the color of the sky, and about exactly what T-Rex was doing. See if there's something about the future. Say what you would think about this if this were your dream. Always come up with something fun or helpful to do with this story. Open up the crayon box, call grandma, etc.

5. Help the child to keep a dream journal. Get this started as early as possible. With a very young child, you can help with the words while they do the pictures. When your child reaches the point where she closes the journal and says, "This is my secret book and you can't read it any more" do not peek. Give her privacy, and let her choose when she'll let you look in that magic book.

6. Provide tools for creative expression. Encourage the child to bring dreams come alive through art, dance, theater and games, and to draw or paint dreams. Gather friends and family for dream-inspired games and performance. Puppets and stuffed animals can be great for acting out dreams. This can also be dress-up time. It's such a release for kids to portray mom or dad or other grown-ups in their lives - be ready to be shocked!

7. Help construct effective action plans Dreams can show us things that require further action - for example, to avoid an unhappy future event that was previewed in the dream, or to put something right in a family situation. A child will probably need adult help with such things, starting with your help. may require adult help, starting with yours. This will eventually require you to learn more about dreaming and dreamwork (hint: you can start with my books).

 8. Let your own inner child out to play As you listen to children's dreams, let the wonderful child dreamer inside you come out and join in the play.

9. Keep it fun! When you get the hang of this, you'll find it's about the best home entertainment you can enjoy.

Notice two things that are not on this list, but would be at the very top of a list of what NOT to do with your children's dreams:
1. NEVER say to a child "It's only a dream". Children know that dreams are for real and that scary stuff that comes out in dreams needs to be resolved, not dismissed.
2. DON'T INTERPRET a child's dreams.You are not the expert here; the child is.

Text adapted from Active Dreaming by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.

Art: Book Tree by a 10-year-old Romanian boy

On making the most important book you'll ever read

When a lusty, ambitious young Scot named James Boswell first met Dr. Samuel Johnson, Johnson advised him to keep a journal of his life. Boswell responded that he was already journaling, recording "all sorts of little incidents." Dr Johnson said, "Sir, there is nothing too little for so little a creature as man."
    Indeed, there is nothing too little, or too great, for inclusion in a journal. If you are not already keeping one, I entreat you to start today. Write whatever is passing through your mind, or whatever catches your eye in the passing scene around you. If you remember your dreams, start with them. If you don't recall your dreams, start with whatever thoughts and feelings are first with you as you enter the day, or that interval between two sleeps the French used to call dorveille ("sleep-wake"), a liminal space when creative ideas often stream through.
    If you have any hopes of becoming a writer, you'll find that journaling is your daily workout that keeps your writing muscles limber. If you are already a writer, you may find that as you set things down just as they come, with no concern for editors, critics or consequences, you are releasing descriptive scenes, narrative solutions, characters - even entire first drafts - quite effortlessly. Some of the most productive writers have also been prodigious journal-keepers.
     Graham Greene started recording dreams when he was sixteen, after a breakdown in school. His journals from the last quarter-century of his life survive, in the all-but-unbreakable code of his difficult handwriting. First and last, he recorded his dreams, and they gave him plot solutions, character development, insights into the nature of reality that he attributed to some of his characters, and sometimes bridge scenes that could be troweled directly into a narrative. Best of all, journaling kept him going, enabling him to crank out his daily pages for publication no matter how many gins or how much cloak-and-dagger or illicit amour he had indulged in the night before.
    You don't have to be a writer to be a journaler, but journal-keeping will make you a writer anyway. In the pages of your journal, you will meet yourself, in all your aspects. As you keep a journal over the years, you'll notice the rhymes and loops or cycles in your life.
    Because I am leading teach workshops in Romania, I have been re-reading Mircea Eliade, the great Romanian-born historian of religions. Opening the last volume of his published journals, I found him reflecting during a visit to Amsterdam in 1974 on how a bitter setback to his hopes at the time he first visited that city nearly a quarter-century before had driven him to do his most enduring work. He had been hoping that his early autobiographical novel, published in English as Bengal Nights, would be a big commercial success, enabling him to live as a full-time novelist. Sales were disappointing. Had it been otherwise, "I would have devoted almost all my time to literature and relegated the history of religions to second place, even though Shamanism was at the time almost entirely drafted." The world would have gained a promising, and perhaps eventually first-class, novelist; but we might have lost the scholar who first made the study of shamanism academically respectable and proceeded to breathe vibrant life, as well as immense erudition, into the cross-cultural study of the human interaction with the sacred.
    Synesius of Cyrene, a heterodox bishop in North Africa around 400, counseled in a wonderful essay On Dreams that we should keep twin journals: a journal of the night and a journal of the day. In the night journal, we would record dreams as the products of a "personal oracle" and a direct line to the God we can talk to. In the day journal, we would track the signs and synchronicities through which the world around us is constantly speaking in a symbolic code. "All things are signs appearing through all things. They are brothers in a single living creature, the cosmos." The sage is one who "understands the relationship of the parts of the universe" - and we deepend and focus that understanding by recording signs in our day journal.
    Partly because I keep unusual hours, and am often embarked on my best creative work long before dawn, I don't separate my night journal from my day journal. All the material goes into one book - a leather-bound travel journal, when I am on the road. I try to type up my entries before my handwriting (as difficult as Greene's) becomes illegible and put the printouts in big ringback binders. I save each entry with a date and a title in my data files, so I automatically have a running index.
    Here are some games I enjoy playing with my journals that you may want to play too:

BIBLIOMANCY

"Bibliomancy" is the fancy name for opening a book at random to get guidance on a theme, or simply the quality and content of the day. I often use old journals in this way. For example, one Christmas Eve, after learning that a friend had developed a serious illness and was having other major troubles in her life, I reached blindly into a shelf of 30+ old travel journals, grabbed one without looking at the date, and opened it at random, I found myself looking at a short dream report from December 2003, just over five years before. The dream was about my friend. It stated that she had "accepted Purgatory for a year. This Purgatory is a room in her home that opens into the same realm." I shared this report with my friend, and we began to work with the meaning of "acceptance" and of "Purgatory". I also shared other reports in that old journal on tbe page before and after the "Purgatory" entry, since I have often noticed that when events start to catch up with an "old" dream, other "old" material around that dream can prove timely and helpful. The neighboring entry in that old journal involved ways of delivering spiritual nourishment, which we found highly relevant.

DEVELOPING YOUR OWN BOOK OF SYMBOLS

Tracking how symbols feature and evolve in your dreams and your experience of the world around you will give you your own encyclopedia of symbols, better than any of those dream dictionaries, because the snake or the train in your dream is yours not theirs. While it may open into the archetypal data banks of the collective unconscious, or super-conscious, those links are for you to explore and not to receive on a hand-me-down plan.

COLLECTING YOUR OWN ANTHOLOGY OF QUOTATIONS

When I was an undergraduate, writing book reviews for a local newpaper, I was fortunate to be assigned one of the first English-language editions of the Carnets of Albert Camus. I was struck by how the great French writer was fired up by the quotes he recorded from his eclectic reading. Etched in my memory is a grim exchange in the Carnets from a Russian source. Avvakum, an archpriest, and his wife, are trudging through a frozen waste. The wife asks, "How far must we journey?" "Until death, daughter of Mark." "Then, son of Peter, we must hurry on."

    My own journals are peppered with quotes from all over, from sources celebrate an utterly obscure, ranging from the message I may have spotted in the first vanity plate I saw on a certain morning (BCRE8V) to a spell from the Egyptian Book of the Dead or a "snapper" from Mark Twain.

HELPING KIDS TO JOURNAL

If we are privileged to have access to young children, one of the greatest gifts we can give them - and in the process, ourselves - is to encourage them to record dreams and stories in a boom that will become a journal. I did this with my own daughters. When they were very young, they would do the pictures and I would write the words for them. They took over more and more of the writing, as they got older, until, at age nine, they were keeping their journals by themselves and for themselves. Then the same thing happened in each case. They said to me, in effect: "That's it, Dad. This is my secret book and you can't read it anymore."
   Now that's a journal. The secret book of your self and your soul, not to be shared with anyone without permission, which should not be given lightly.

When life deals you a tough hand, you'll find that as you write your journal, you are practicing spontaneous self-therapy. You may be able to write your way through whatever ails you. There's a great release, perhaps a catharsis, in saying what you need to say in the safe space your journal provides. When you see and state things as they are, you already begin to change them. Keep your hand moving, and you may manifest the power to re-name and re-vision symptoms, challenges and difficult situations in the direction of resolution and healing.
    As you keep your secret book, you'll discover more, and more will discover you. You'll find yourself straying off the tame and settled developments of the everyday mind, into the wilder borders of imagination, where the Big story of your life can find you.

For more games to play with your journal, please see my book Active Dreaming. For a template for keeping a dream journal, please see chapter 7 of my book Dreaming True.

Nine Keys to Helping Kids with Their Dreams

Here's what we need to know about listening to children's dreams and supporting their imaginations: 

1. Listen up!

When a child wants to tell a dream, make room for that. Make some daily space for dream sharing. Listen to the stories and cherish them for their own sake.

2. Invite good dreams

Pick the right bedtime reading or better still, tell stories. Help your child to weave a web of good dream intentions for the night - for example, by asking "What would you most like to do tonight?" Encourage children to sleep with a favorite stuffed animal (whether teddy bear or T-Rex) and make this a dream guardian.

3. Provide immediate help with the scary stuff

If your child was scared by something in the night, recognize you are the ally the child needs right now. Do something right away to move out that negative energy. Get a frightened child to spit it out (literally) or draw a picture of what scared her and tear it up as violently as possible.

4. Ask good questions.

When the child has told her story, ask good questions. Ask about feelings, about the color of the sky, and about exactly what T-Rex was doing. See if there's something about the future. Say what you would think about this if this were your dream. Always come up with something fun or helpful to do with this story. Open up the crayon box, call grandma, etc.

5. Help the child to keep a dream journal

Get this started as early as possible. With a very young child, you can help with the words while they do the pictures. When your child reaches the point where she closes the journal and says, “This is my secret book and you can't read it any more” do not peek. Give her privacy, and let her choose when she'll let you look in that magic book.

6. Provide tools for creative expression.

Encourage the child to bring dreams come alive through art, dance, theater and games, and to draw or paint dreams. Gather friends and family for dream-inspired games and performance. Puppets and stuffed animals can be great for acting out dreams. This can also be dress-up time. It's such a release for kids to portray mom or dad or other grown-ups in their lives - be ready to be shocked!

7. Help construct effective action plans

Dreams can show us things that require further action - for example, to avoid an unhappy future event that was previewed in the dream, or to put something right in a family situation. A child will probably need adult help with such things, starting with your help. This will require you to learn more about dreaming and dreamwork, as you are doing now.

 8. Let your own inner child out to play

As you listen to children's dreams, let the wonderful child dreamer inside you come out and join in the play.

9. Keep it fun!

When you get the hang of this, you'll find it's about the best home entertainment you can enjoy.

Notice two things that are not on this list, but would be at the very top of a list of what not to do with a child’s dreams: 

1. Never say to a child "It's only a dream". Children know that dreams are for real and that scary stuff that comes out in dreams needs to be resolved, not dismissed.

2. Do NOT interpret a child's dreams. You’re not the expert here; the child is.

Text adapted from Active Dreaming by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.

Drawing by Robert Moss

We dream dreams of the child, and the child dreams of us

I often hear dreams from adults that sound like the products of a child's imagination. One dreamer is menaced by giants. She runs but can't get away - until Superman swoops down to rescue her. Another dreamer is entertained by a strange composite animal, a cross between a jolly pink pig and a hairless dog, with a strip of carpet instead of a tail.

     In such dreams, buildings and people around the dreamer often seem vastly larger than in regular life, as adults and cities might appear from the perspective of a young child. At the same time, the dreamer may find she has the ability to make herself greatly bigger or smaller, like Alice with the "Drink Me" bottles.
     I wonder whether such child-like dreams really are the dreams of the child within the dreamer. They may be returning memories of dreams in early life. They may also be a direct link to the inner child, providing a chance to bring more of her energy, joy and imagination into current life. They may even be a bridge to connect with the child in her Now time, which is past history for the adult except when released from the constraints of linear time, as in dreaming.
    I have given happy examples thus far, but the dreams of the child may of course be filled with challenge and drenched in fear. Those menacing giants may represent abusive adults and authority figures the child can't handle, and Superman is not always available. Yet when the bridge to the child in her own Now time is open, we can slip across it, to offer support and mentoring that may be desperately needed. We can help to provide the heroes our child selves want to be dreaming of. 

    I know this: we can travel across time, and we can play mentor and counselor to a younger self, or receive help and guidance from a wiser older self. At the very least, when we reach to that younger self, we can offer the assurance that however much he is suffering, he or she will make it through.
    We dream dreams of the child, and the child dreams of us.

Art: "Jumping Rope" by A.E. (George Russell)

Nine Keys to Helping Kids with Their Dreams

Here's what we need to know about listening to children's dreams and supporting their imaginations: 

1. Listen up!

When a child wants to tell a dream, make room for that. Make some daily space for dream sharing. Listen to the stories and cherish them for their own sake. 

2. Invite good dreams
Pick the right bedtime reading or better still, tell stories. Help your child to weave a web of good dream intentions for the night — for example, by asking “What would you most like to do tonight?” Encourage children to sleep with a favorite stuffed animal (whether teddy bear or T-Rex) and make this a dream guardian. 

3. Provide immediate help with the scary stuff
If your child was scared by something in the night, recognize you are the ally the child needs right now. Do something right away to move out that negative energy. Hugs usually help. Get a frightened child to spit it the yucky stuff (literally) or draw a picture of what scared her and tear it up as violently as possible. Help her choose the right stuffed animal or toy to be a guardian for the night. When things are calm, you can suggest facing what was scary and dealing with it on its own ground - with a Riddikulus spell (as used in the Harry Potter stories to banish boggarts), or befriending it or by scaring it back.

4. Ask good questions.
When the child has told her story, ask good questions. Ask about feelings, about the color of the sky, and about exactly what T-Rex was doing. See if there's something about the future. Say what you would think about this if this were your dream. Always come up with something fun or helpful to do with this story. Open up the crayon box, call grandma, etc. 

5. Help the child to keep a dream journal
Get this started as early as possible. With a very young child, you can help with the words while they do the pictures. When your child reaches the point where she closes the journal and says, “This is my secret book and you can't read it any more” do not peek. Give her privacy, and let her choose when she'll let you look in that magic book. 

6. Provide tools for creative expression.
Encourage the child to bring dreams come alive through art, dance, theater and games, and to draw or paint dreams. Gather friends and family for dream-inspired games and performance. Puppets and stuffed animals can be great for acting out dreams. This can also be dress-up time. It's such a release for kids to portray mom or dad or other grown-ups in their lives — be ready to be shocked! 

7. Help construct effective action plans
Dreams can show us things that require further action — for example, to avoid an unhappy future event that was previewed in the dream, or to put something right in a family situation. A child will probably need adult help with such things, starting with your help. This will require you to learn more about dreaming and dreamwork, as you are doing now.

 8. Let your own inner child out to play
As you listen to children's dreams, let the wonderful child dreamer inside you come out and join in the play. 

9. Keep it fun! 

When you get the hang of this, you'll find it's about the best home entertainment you can enjoy.

Notice two things that are not on this list, but would be at the very top of a list of what not to do with a child’s dreams: 

Never say to a child “It's only a dream”. Children know that dreams are for real and that scary stuff that comes out in dreams needs to be resolved, not dismissed.

Do NOT interpret a child's dreams. You’re not the expert here; the child is.

Adapted from Active Dreaming: Journeying beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library. © Robert Moss. All Rights Reserved.

How to Handle a Giant People-Eating-Goat: Making a dream book with a six-year-old

On the last day of a training for dream teachers I was leading in Prague, Marketa brought us a little book with the most wonderful illustrations. She told us she had made it with her six-year-old daughter Františka. She said, "It is one of the most precious books we have at home."
    She proceeded to tell us the origin of the book, which is titled Velký Kozel, or "Big Goat".
    Little Františka woke crying from a very scary dream. Her mother comforted her, but did not press for the contents of the dream when her daughter said that she did not want to talk about it. "I know that my daughter is brave, and I knew she would deal with it when she was ready."    A couple of days later, Františka came to her mother with a question. "Mom, do goats eat people?"    "I don't think so."
    "And what about billy goats?"
    "That's an interesting question. Why do you ask?"
   At this point, Františka was ready to tell the  dream. What had scared her was a giant black billy goat, bigger than a tree, that was eating people.    "Let's explore," her mother suggested. "Why would a goat start eating people?"
    Františka thought about this. She loved puzzles and codes, and soon her creative and investigative mind was working.     She started telling the story of a goat who was desperately unhappy because he was abnormally large and shunned by other goats.
   "Wait," her mother said. "Don't you want to draw his picture?"
   She drew the big black goat, and as her story developed, she made picture after picture. Not wanting to miss a detail, her mother helped her to write the chapters that went with the drawings.
   
Once there was a very big goat who was unhappy because he did not fit in. He had eaten a blade of magic grass that made him bigger than trees or houses. He grew as big as a mountain. He was always hungry, and he started eating people. One day he ate a goat that had wandered away from the flock. Now the goats were very scared and they asked a giant for help. The giant asked the black goat what was wrong with him. "I'm too big!" the black goat complained. The giant went to consult a wizard.

    When the giant found the wizard, he was in the middle of an experiment. He was so startled that things blew up. Nonethless, the wizard was able to tell the giant where to look for the counter-spell that will restore the people-eater to the normal proportions of a goat. This will require another blade of magic grass, dipped in oil. The wizard also explained that humans must make a special blueberry cake that would bring the people and other creatures the giant goat had eaten back to life.
    The story develops terrific energy on its way to a happy ending. Františka's mother, who is a librarian, was able to bind the pages together to make a lovely little book, which will always be treasured.
    There is a rich teaching here for anyone who has the privilege of listening to the dreams and stories of young children.
     There are three things we need to be prepared to do, always, to help kids with their dreams. First, we need to listen up, to be present without judgment or analysis to what is being shared. Second, we need to be ready to provide help, right away, with the scary stuff, In  Františka's case, this simply required hugs from her mother and reassurance that mom would be there whenever she needed more. In another case, a child might need to be encouraged to spit out bad energy (quite literally) or to accept a stuffed animal as a guardian for the night.   
    Third, we want to be poised to help kids do something creative with their dreams. Pictures on the fridge are a great start, but why not think about helping a child to create a long-running journal, or even to make a finished book? Františka's dream book, in its text and pictures, is at least the equal of many books for children produced by professional writers, and it has the power and authenticity of imagination working on first-hand experience.   
    Bravo, Františka! And Bravo, Marketa, for being a dream mother!

    

Punching a Hole in the World: Listening to Children's Dreams

Young children know how to go to Magic Kingdoms without paying for tickets, because they are at home in the imagination and live close to their dreams. When she was very young, my daughter Sophie had adventures in a special place called Teddy Bear Land, where she met a special friend. I loved hearing about these travels, and encouraged her to make drawings and spin further stories from them.
    One day Sophie sat down beside me and asked with great earnestness, "Daddy, would you like to know how I get to Teddy Bear Land?"
   "I'd love to."
    "Sometimes I take the Sun Gate. Sometimes I take the Moon Gate. Sometimes I take the Tree Gate. Sometimes I take the Rainbow Bridge. And sometimes I just punch a hole in the world."
    I've never heard anyone say it better. To live the larger life. we need to punch a hole in the world. This is what dreaming - sleeping or waking or hyper-awake - is really all about. On our roads to adulthood, we sometimes forget how to do it, just as older children in the Chronicles of Narnia cease to be able to see Aslan as they approach adolescence and become more and more burdened by the reality definitions of the grown-ups around them.
     When we listen, truly listen, to very young children, we start to remember that the distance between us and the Magic Kingdoms is no wider than the edge of a sleep mask. True listening requires us to pay attention; to attend, in its root meaning in the Latin, is to stretch ourselves, which requires us to expand our vocabulary of understanding. We owe nothing less to the young children in our lives. When we do this, we discover that they can be our very best teachers on how to dream and what dreaming can be.
      Here's what we need to know about listening to children's dreams and supporting their imaginations:

1. Listen up! When a child wants to tell a dream, make room for that. Make some daily space for dream sharing. Listen to the stories and cherish them for their own sake.

2. Invite good dreams Pick the right bedtime reading or better still, tell stories. Help your child to weave a web of good dream intentions for the night - for example, by asking "What would you most like to do tonight?" Encourage children to sleep with a favorite stuffed animal (whether teddy bear or T-Rex) and make this a dream guardian.

3. Provide immediate help with the scary stuff If your child was scared by something in the night, recognize you are the ally the child needs right now. Do something right away to move out that negative energy. Get a frightened child to spit it out (literally) or draw a picture of what scared her and tear it up as violently as possible.

4. Ask good questions. When the child has told her story, ask good questions. Ask about feelings, about the color of the sky, and about exactly what T-Rex was doing. See if there's something about the future. Say what you would think about this if this were your dream. Always come up with something fun or helpful to do with this story. Open up the crayon box, call grandma, etc.

5. Help the child to keep a dream journal. Get this started as early as possible. With a very young child, you can help with the words while they do the pictures. When your child reaches the point where she closes the journal and says, "This is my secret book and you can't read it any more" do not peek. Give her privacy, and let her choose when she'll let you look in that magic book.

6. Provide tools for creative expression. Encourage the child to bring dreams come alive through art, dance, theater and games, and to draw or paint dreams. Gather friends and family for dream-inspired games and performance. Puppets and stuffed animals can be great for acting out dreams. This can also be dress-up time. It's such a release for kids to portray mom or dad or other grown-ups in their lives - be ready to be shocked!

7. Help construct effective action plans Dreams can show us things that require further action - for example, to avoid an unhappy future event that was previewed in the dream, or to put something right in a family situation. A child will probably need adult help with such things, starting with your help. may require adult help, starting with yours. This will eventually require you to learn more about dreaming and dreamwork (hint: you can start with my books).

 8. Let your own inner child out to play As you listen to children's dreams, let the wonderful child dreamer inside you come out and join in the play.

9. Keep it fun! When you get the hang of this, you'll find it's about the best home entertainment you can enjoy.

Notice two things that are not on this list, but would be at the very top of a list of what NOT to do with your children's dreams: 

1. NEVER say to a child "It's only a dream". Children know that dreams are for real and that scary stuff that comes out in dreams needs to be resolved, not dismissed.
2. DON'T INTERPRET a child's dreams.You are not the expert here; the child is.

Text adapted from Active Dreaming: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.

Photo by RM

The first things to know about children's dreams

The first thing to understand about working with children’s dreams is that adults need to listen up. And that means making a space, a space where you’re not interrupted where you’re not distracted by the phone or other obligations.  For a sufficient time it might just be five or ten minutes to hear the kid’s dream and to be attentive to them and to provide a protected space for them to talk.  That is the first thing: listen. And in listening remember that the child is the expert on the dream, not you.  Children actually know more about dreaming then most adults because they’re closer to the source of dreaming.

     The second thing to know about helping kids with their dreams is if they’ve got scary stuff from the night help them to move it out right away.  Help them to move that energy.  If it’s something yucky in the dream take them outside and get them to spit on the ground, or get them to make an image of what scared them and tear it up.  Sometimes what is going on in the night that scares kids is not really a dream but a disturbance in the psychic atmosphere, you know the family problems might be spilling over into the emotional atmosphere of the child’s bedroom and sometimes they’re picking that up, and they’re responding to rather formless things that don’t have the shape and content of dreams but constitute an unpleasant energy that needs to be moved out right away.

     When kids have scary dreams that have content and stories, they’re being chased by a monster or something like that, the first thing they need from you is support and the assurance they have an ally.  The first ally they’re going to hope to find is you.  You are their ally.  They’re facing something scary; be their ally. A practical way which you can help to prepare them to face most scary things in the night is to give them something that can be an additional ally.  With young children a stuffed toy representing a fierce but friendly animal for them; it’s a terrific ally.  I’ve seen situations change in a household when the kid is encouraged to make the teddy bear, or the tiger, or the dog toy, the ally, the protector during the night.

      These are the first things, to listen and to give them a way to move the scary energy along and another thing you want to do with children’s dreams: you want to give them a creative way of celebrating the dreams or celebrate their accomplishments in playing with their dreams, which is to help them to draw from the dream or tell the story, or turn it into theater.

      Children are naturals for dream theater.  They absolutely love play acting the role of adults who appear in their dreams, all the actions of monsters.  I did a dream theater with a whole group of children or various ages and there was a dinosaur and a T-rex in the dream and they had such fun playacting the T-rex and the dinosaur and the T-rex eggs, and the terrified mom who didn’t understand that T-rex could be your very best friend.  Absolutely hilarious, you’ve got energy going; you’ve got creativity coming alive.

     For the longer haul, as early as they’re telling dreams if you’re an adult who’s a caregiver or a family member, or a schoolteacher or whatever, you can encourage the child to start keeping what will become a journal of their dreams, a book of their dreams, their special place to keep their drawings and their accounts.  You might need to help them to write when they are very young, but which they can write in themselves later on.  And if you encourage them to keep a journal: that is going to be such a treasure box in that child’s life and in the life of the whole family, and you’ll go back to that with delight later on.  They will have encouraged habits of storytelling and creativity.

When a kid is afraid of the dark, YOU can be the flashlight

This guest blog by dream teacher Jane Carleton is a lovely reminder that the first thing kids need from us when they talk about what goes on in the night is for someone to LISTEN UP - and then, if necessary, to help make a decisive move to deal with the scary stuff.

Guest blog by Jane Carleton

I was once at a friend’s house and met a young girl, about seven years old, visiting with her family from far away. I asked her about her dreams, and she shyly shared that she had a reeeeeeally scary dream that week.
     “Really scary." Oh? Tell me more! “I was home and the wall in my bedroom was full of eyes looking at me!” Oh, how scary! Was it day or night? “Night.” Oh! Scary! “Yes.” What would you like to see happen with those eyes if you could do anything? “I want them to close!” Oooof. Me, too. What could make that happen? “I’d shine a big light at them.” Great idea! What kind of light? “A big flashlight!” Perfect! Would you like to do something about those eyes right now? “OK.”
      All right…see that wall…let’s imagine that wall is the wall in your bedroom. “OK.” And now…I’m here with you, so you’re safe…can you image that wall is full of those eyes, just like in your dream? “Ooooo Yes!” OK, we need a flashlight, right? How about if I be the flashlight, and you shine me on all of those eyes and make them not only close, but also disappear? “Yeah. OK!!!”     
      We did a little dream theater right on the spot. This beautiful little girl, empowered and happy, shone her imaginary flashlight all over the wall, guiding me as the flashlight to shine right where she felt the light was needed. It was just right and the dream was no longer scary. No interpretations, no lessons, just a moment of dreaming together.     
       Meanwhile, the adults were deep in conversation and didn’t realize the beauty of the moment. My new friend skipped off to another room and I rejoined the conversation.                     About twenty minutes later, she came up to me with a big sheet of drawing paper…she wanted to share more dreams with me, and had drawn sketches of about a half dozen dreams…and was brimming with excitement at telling me about her dreams.
      A gate had opened simply because she found someone who was genuinely interested in her amazing inner life. We can do this for others, children and adults alike, and if we open to dreaming with adults, the child within will come out to play.

Jane E. Carleton, MA, GG specializes in dreams as an international consultant, educator, and workshop leader. With two graduate degrees in Dreams and Consciousness Studies, she is an adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Jane teaches a variety of contemporary and cross-cultural experiential, transformative dreaming techniques, including Robert Moss’s Active Dreaming. 

Do four-year-olds dream precognitive dreams?

This just in from dream teacher Valerie McCarney:

"We were in Virginia and like always, my grandson got into bed with me to tell me his dream. In this one , he was in a forest of mean trees. The trees all had faces and arms and he had lots of sticks and rocks to throw at them. There was one little squirrel and he wanted to save him from the trees. He asked me to draw it and I made a quick sketch. 

   "Later that day we took a ride to a Christmas event at Busch Gardens. Old Country was set up as European countries, all decorated for Christmas.
    "We crossed the bridge into Ireland and there was his tree. He said, 'See this is the tree was that in my dream last night.' Then he ran into it. It is the tree in the photo I took.

     "it is so important to get children started young believing in the power of dreams."

Drawing and photo of the "mean tree" by Valerie McCarney

Dreaming like a child

I often hear dreams from adults that sound like the products of a child's imagination. One dreamer is menaced by giants. She runs but can't get away - until Superman swoops down to rescue her. Another dreamer is entertained by a strange composite animal, a cross between a jolly pink pig and a hairless dog, with a strip of carpet instead of a tail.
     In such dreams, buildings and people around the dreamer often seem vastly larger than in regular life, as adults and cities might appear from the perspective of a young child. At the same time, the dreamer may find she has the ability to make herself greatly bigger or smaller, like Alice with the "Drink Me" bottles.
     I wonder whether such child-like dreams really are the dreams of the child within the dreamer. They may be returning memories of dreams in early life. They may also be a direct link to the inner child, providing a chance to bring more of her energy, joy and imagination into current life. They may even be a bridge to connect with the child in her Now time, which is past history for the adult except when released from the constraints of linear time, as in dreaming.
    I have given happy examples thus far, but the dreams of the child may of course be filled with challenge and drenched in fear. Those menacing giants may represent abusive adults and authority figures the child can't handle, and Superman is not always available. Yet when the bridge to the child in her own Now time is open, we can slip across it, to offer support and mentoring that may be desperately needed. We can help to provide the heroes our child selves want to be dreaming of.

I know that this helped a sick, lonely boy in Australia long, long ago, in the 1950s. I was reminded how that worked not long ago when I ordered a taxi to take me to the airport at 4:00 a.m. The driver was whiskery and bleary, but friendly, and struck up conversation by remarking, "You have an accent." I get this endlessly in the United States, where anyone who speaks another form of English is held to have an "accent". After allowing that my accent might be described as "Anglo-Australian", the driver proceeded to tell me that he is fascinated by "the British life style" and watches lots of period English movies and TV. He then asked if I could solve a mystery. "The characters are always having tea and crumpets. What is a crumpet?"
    I spent the rest of the ride explaining the difference between a crumpet and an English muffin, and singing the praises of the crumpet, a staple of my boyhood and still a favorite comfort food, though I must now order my supply by mail.
    As I got out of the cab, I realized this odd early morning conversation had given me a lead for the day. I was scheduled to give a lecture that evening at East West Bookshop in Seattle. I had already decided that I would read some fresh selections from The Boy Who Died and Came Back but had not yet made my selection. Now I had it. An early chapter in my memoir is entitled "Crumpet Time". It celebrates crumpets, but is also a narrative of time travel by an older self to support a younger self in his own Now time. Here is an excerpt:

~

The friends who helped me most in the time I was sick and lonely as a young boy were invisible to others. One of the best of these friends was the Big Man. He was like a favorite uncle I did not have. One of the lessons he taught me was how to eat crumpets.

    The Big Man came to me when I was in my bedroom, sick and lonely and feeling really sorry for myself. It was one of those days when I wanted to leave.  I felt a presence in the room, then the mattress tipped a little as someone eased down on to the edge of the bed. A hand closed on my shoulder, squeezing just a little.
    “That’s right,” my visitor said. “You really are all right.”
    The warm, confident voice was familiar but I could not put a name to it. I rolled over and looked up into a large pink face, smiling at me from under a mane of white hair.

     “I know it’s hard for you,” my visitor went on. “I know you’re lonely and feel rotten. But you are going to make it through. You’ll be knocked down some more, but you will always get up again. You are a survivor, Robert. Trust me. You will make it through.”
     The Big Man was hugging me then. I felt so small and fragile in his embrace, and I could not stop the tears flowing because I felt safe and because this stranger was holding me as my mother never did, not since I died.
     “Write,” he encouraged me. “Write your dreams. Write those adventures that stream through your head when you’re playing with your toy soldiers.”
    “Nobody wants to hear my dreams,” I complained.
    “You may have to lie low for now. But the day will come when lecture halls will be filled with people who are eager to hear your dreams and to tell their dreams to you. I promise you.  You are lonely,” he repeated. “But I promise you that the time will come when you will know the love of women and women will love you.”
    I must have fallen asleep, because I did not see him go. I did not ask him who he was. I often sensed him nearby, when I was alone. When he was close, I felt bigger and stronger.

When we were living in Melbourne, my mother took me to the café in the stately old Myers department store for afternoon tea, and I always had crumpets.
    I felt the Big Man close to me one afternoon in the café. “Crumpets taste much better with salt and pepper,” he nudged me. “Go on. No one will mind.”.  
    I reached around the pots of jam and marmalade for the shakers, and gave my crumpets a good dose of salt and pepper. The waitress looked at me. My mother just went on sipping her tea. .I had done stranger things. The Big Man was right. Crumpets are really nice with salt and pepper. 
     I know this: we can travel across time, and we can play mentor and counselor to a younger self, or receive help and guidance from a wiser older self. At the very least, when we reach to that younger self, we can offer the assurance that however much he is suffering, he or she will make it through. 

We dream dreams of the child, and the child dreams dreams of us.

Book excerpt from The Boy Who Died and Came Back by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library. 

Photo: The dreamer as a boy.