Short of just letting them crawl into bed with you, how do you calm a child when they awaken from a nightmare, or when they get scared by a storm or something? Is it best to put them in their own bed and just stay next to them so they're not afraid? Or is it okay to actually let them crawl into your bed?

Short of just letting them crawl into bed with you, how do you calm a child when they awaken from a nightmare, or when they get scared by a storm or something? Is it best to put them in their own bed and just stay next to them so they're not afraid? Or is it okay to actually let them crawl into your bed?

When mine would have a nightmare, I would hold them and rock them, talk softly to them and just reassure them that it was just a bad dream. My son would get real bad nightmares. I found him a little, green, horned looking stuffed animal and told him that it was just for him. It would protect him from bad nightmares. We even had a little chant that went with it

Monfer, monfer, go away.
Monfer, monferr, I don't wanna play.
Monfer, monfers, leave me alone...U!

It made sense to him and it did help.

DCMerkle

My daughter always said that there was someone in the corner of the room when she would wake up with a nightmare. Typical nightmare stuff. We would turn the light on and go sit in the corner on the floor so she would see that there was no one there. I would always try to make her room as comfy, cozy friendly as possible. The more time she spent in her room the more the nightmares stopped.

seeker

Luckily my son doesn't have nightmares yet (that I know of). But I used to get some all the time. I am a sensitive person, and I had many horrible dreams that I needed to be with my mom for.

My sons would just come into bed with us when they were really scared. We had a huge bed so it was alright.

I just my daughter a story in her bed untill she is calm again or falls back to sleep.