Maggie and Bad dreams

Lately Maggie has been having a lot of bad dreams. She has been wandering into our room in the middle of the night looking for comfort and hopes of climbing into our bed. With patience, most of the time, we lovingly walk her back to her room. We tuck her back in, give kisses, and rub her back for a minute or two. Or we hear her crying out and go in to comfort her. Then we go back to our bed and hope that the rest of the night offers more rest for her and for us.

I seem to recall both her older sister and brother going through a bad dream phase around this age. It will pass. She will learn to "deal" better with her dreams when she wakes up. In time.

So yesterday Maggie, Ben and I were driving in the car headed to school and I was telling Maggie that Daddy was picking her up. She said she already knew and that Daddy had told her that in the middle of the night when she was crying from her bad dream. That then led to a conversation about her bad dreams that went like this...

Maggie: I have been having a lot of bad dreams at night. They are only when I sleep though, not when I'm awake.

Me: I know, why? What are the bad dreams about?

Maggie: Well, the bad dream last night was about me getting fried dough with sugar on it. I went to the sink to wash my hands and Katelyn was there. Then my fried dough fell in the sink and the water washed all the sugar off.

Me: Oh, really, that was why you were crying? Because your fried dough fell in the sink and the powdered sugar washed off?

Maggie: Yeah, that was my bad dream.

I had to keep myself from laughing! The more I thought about it though, I am so glad that her mind is so innocent and this is what her bad dream was about. There is so much terrible stuff in our world but Maggie is still naive to it. Honestly I think I am still so naive to it.

I hope to keep our kids safe and some what sheltered for as long as possible. I hope to keep their bad dreams about fried dough catastrophes and not "real catastrophes"...