“Mom! Can I sleep with you?” This is the most often
asked question by a six to eight year old child. Many parents initially
give in to their child’s request as they feel the child needs more
time to understand the importance of sleeping alone. But one among ten
mothers may try to find the real reason of their child’s fear. Most
commonly children have fear of dark. Some frequently get nightmares
where they visualize green eyed monsters or a giant dragon that is
running behind them to gobble them up in one go. Some do not like
loneliness. When the first and third reasons are somewhat acceptable
and does not associate any medical symptom with itself, the second
condition of regular fretful nightmares needs a serious watch. Here are
some common patterns that can develop into a serious mental block in
the future years of the child.
- Repeating patterns in nightmare
If the child is frequently seeing the same dream
sequence, it definitely means some serious trouble in the brewing. The
parent needs to observe the child’s behavioral pattern, the books he
reads, the TV programmes that he watches and the friends he moves out
with. If the reason for the nightmare is resultant of either of the
above reasons, the child is just affected on the periphery.
Unfortunately, if the child has a constrained and depressed mind set
and is highly sensitive by nature, it is a must for the parent to
connect to a child psychiatrist for further help.
- Delusional disorders
Delusions definition
is simple. It is another variant of schizophrenia where the affected
person hears voices that are inaudible to others. With delusion the
person firmly believes the unreal exists and remains confused. Some
common types of delusional disorders that will reflect in early child
hood are through hallucinations and frequent terrors in the form of
nightmares. Hence if these dream patterns continues above the age of 12,
the child needs psychotic treatments to channelize their thoughts and
get back to normalcy.
- How to help the child?
The children are parent’s treasure. Rather than
forcing them to sleep alone and overcome the fear themselves as they
have become “of age”, parents must step into the child’s shoes and find
out what is disturbing them. Parents must help their child to
understand what is real and what is non-existent and indulge the child
into real world sports or games that makes the children grow physically
and mentally strong.
No comments:
Post a Comment