What is it about?
Preschool children often wake at night with bad dreams or nightmares. We sought to investigate the possibility that children with more nightmares had had more upsetting life events than those with fewer nightmares. We thought that this might be the case because people who have had traumatic events develop nightmares.
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Why is it important?
The connection between nightmares and life events is important because the origin of dreams is not entirely clear. Our results show that the connection between life events and nightmares is not strong in this age group who characteristically have a high frequency of nightmares.
Perspectives
Nightmares or bad dreams are interesting as a reflection of what is happening or has happened in an adult's life. Young children's brains are not however configured in the same way as adults and they have more sleep disturbances or parasomnias than adults. We were unable to establish a link between life eve3nts and nightmares in this group.
Dr Timothy Ivor Williams
University of Reading
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Nightmares, life events and behaviour problems in preschool children, Child Care Health and Development, March 1992, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2214.1992.tb00346.x.
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