E17: THERE'S A MONSTER UNDER MY BED! Nightmare Support for Kids

This week we’re diving into the dream world! Join me as I sit down with hypnotherapist, psychologist and mental health counselor, Isobel McGrath for a thoughtful conversation about children’s dreams, nightmares, and the deeper meaning of the dream world. Together we will explore how dreams can serve as emotional, energetic, and even spiritual forms of communication, while offering parents practical tools for supporting their children through nighttime fears, recurring nightmares, and night terrors. 

From calming bedtime rituals and grounding techniques to understanding the difference between normal developmental experiences and signs that may need extra support, this episode is filled with compassionate insight for parents navigating the night world with their kids. Whether your child is having vivid dreams, struggling with scary sleep experiences, or simply curious about the dream space, this conversation offers reassurance, wisdom, and gentle guidance for the whole family.

Meet our special guest:

Isobel McGrath is originally from Ireland and holds a degree in Psychology from London, along with a Master of Science in Counseling from Western Connecticut State University. She is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Florida, a Nationally Certified Counselor, and an accredited member of the British Association for Counseling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

Isobel is an International Addiction Counselor and a Clinical Hypnotherapist who creates her own hypnosis recordings to support behavioral change. She is the author of Lose Weight: 21 Winning Tips to Begin a Healthy Mindset and Lifestyle Change.

Having studied with leading dream interpreters—including Jeremy Taylor, Montague Ullman, and Robert Moss—Isobel has presented internationally and regularly facilitates dream groups.

Webstie: www.mindful-options

Email: www.isobelmcgrath.com

*For privacy and protection, all children mentioned in this episode are referred to using fictional names or general references. I deeply honor the confidentiality of every child and family I work with.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Hello and welcome to In a Spiritual Sense Kids, a podcast for parents, teachers, and caregivers seeking to support their children's emotional and energetic development. On the show, we'll blend insights from neuroscience, child psychology, and emotional awareness as we explore natural ways to help kids understand their own energy, stay grounded, and enhance creativity and imagination. Don't forget to check out our sister channel in the spiritual sense, where we dive a little deeper into the metaphysical, working to build your intuition, connect with spirit guides, the paranormal, energetic healing, and more. Join me, Stacy Piagno, where we work to bridge the gap between science and spirit. Hello and welcome back to In a Spiritual Sense Kids. I'm your host, Stacy Piagno. Today we are discussing one of my favorite topics, dreaming. If you all listen to In a Spiritual Sense, you know I teach dream work classes. Go check out my website, and I spend a lot of my personal time learning through the dream space. Well, today we have with us licensed counselor, psychotherapist, and hypnotherapist Isabel McGrath, who is not only here to discuss the dream space, but nightmares in particular, and how we can help guide our children through any discomfort they are having. I am very excited to have you on today, Isabel. Thank you for sharing your time with us and welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Thank you so much, Stacy, for having me on. It's a real privilege to be part of your part of your show. I've listened to it, and I have to say that you do a wonderful job with great information for people. So keep up the good work.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, I would love, Isabel, for you to start by giving us a little bit about your background. How did you get into working with dreams and especially for kids for a short amount of time as well?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

So I'm originally from Ireland, Northern Ireland, and um, you know, with the Celtic tradition there, we really believe in the life force energy that's in everything. So I grew up with people talking about dreams, and it was just part of what we did, and especially premonition dreams. So if you dreamt of a birth or a death, it was a birth, so it wasn't such a scary thing. So it was just a natural thing that I grew up with. So I went to London and I did my degree in psychology, and that's when I learned about Freud and Young and all the different psychologists that dealt with dreams. And then I went on to do a master's in clinical in counselling in West Con in Danbury, Connecticut. And I learned a little bit more there. Then I went on, got licensed, got certified as an addiction professional and also hypnotherapist. And it also was very much about the subconscious, which is where dreams come from. So that just opened up more for me. And then from there, I was at the place of deciding what you know where to go, what to do. And um, what I did was I used dreams as a way of giving me direction. So I myself used dreams as a way of helping me make the decision whether to move to the states or not. So I was living in London and I had got my green card for the ability to go and work in the states legally. So I asked my dreams for information as to whether I should do this or not. At this time, I was already settled into London. I was working in the mental health field, I was quite content. So the dream that I had was I walked into the doctor's office, he was wearing a white coat, and he looked at my record and he said to me, Stop eating salt. And I said, Pardon? He said, Stop eating salt. That was the end of the dream. So what I interpreted from this was the doctor was my inner healer, masculine, which is the doing energy that gets stuff done. And the salt is a preservative which keeps things the same. So the dream was saying to me, don't keep things the same. You you know, you should you should move, you should move. And also from my religious studies, I had learned in the Bible about Lot's wife when she was asked to leave, they were asked to leave Sodom and Gomorrah, uh, not to look back. That she was asked, don't look back, otherwise you'll be turned into a pillar of salt, and she did. So I took it from that, yeah, was don't look back. So I made the decision to go to the states and to give it two years, two years and not look back. And it was good that I did that because that helped me like to move through the transition of being in a different country, you know, a different way of speaking, yeah, you know, a different way of operating or whatever, and without my family and friends. So it really was helpful for me, that dream. So so that of course has been with me ever since, and I use dreams quite often to for guidance, and it's been around since this, you know, 600 BC, that people would go into temples and have healing dreams, so it's something that everybody can do. So I was asking for for direction, so I went on to have my private practice then, and I incorporated dreams into that, and of course, I was getting asked by parents about their children's dreams, and especially nightmares. Nightmares, you know, child children have lots of nightmares, and I was getting asked for information, about guidance about how to deal with them. So that's why I got into working more with the children's dreams and finding out information that would be helpful to parents, and also, you know, caregivers, teachers, other therapists would ask because you know it wasn't it wasn't an area that had been explored very much.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

So dreams are fascinating for children because if you can help them um deal with their nightmares, you can help them in their waking life. Yes, which is valuable.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yes, I love that. Okay, and we're gonna break it all down. So I do want to get into the aspect of nightmares, but before we do that, let's just dig a little deeper into the dreams and the subconscious. What are dreams? Why do we have them?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

Well, it depends on your perspective. Some people say that they're just neural fire firings in the brain, um, and that they mean nothing. But if you look deeper into it with Jongian psychology, whatever, we really believe that they can really be helpful and beneficial. So, according to Carl Jung, the actual dreams come from the subconscious mind and also the collective mind, which that means that we're all in this together. So um Jung talked about it being like the ocean. So we have the iceberg, which um is our individual minds, and then we have the water in which we all swim in, which is the collective subconscious. So we're picking up symbolic language, so it's a different language than what we're used to, and each is individual, but we have this collective knowledge, and that they that knowledge can be beneficial if you work with the symbology behind it. It can be it can help in your inner growth, it can help you get um spiritual direction for your living your full potential in life, it can really help you um live a life in which that you feel more fulfilled in.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

And that if you tap into that, you can have that guidance available to you alongside you. It's it's like you're having this communication with your subconscious and your conscious mind, you know, as you go through life, which means that you have this well of inner life that you can reach into. So, according to Jungian psychology, it helps with wholeness, spiritual growth, wholeness, it helps you overcome challenges, it helps you understand the obstacles. You're um when you're divided in your mind about doing things, you know, you're you're ambivalent, it helps you get clearer. So it's a wealth of information and help. So that's my belief, and that's how I work with dreams.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Yeah, no, I agree with you spot on. You know, I've been doing dream work for a while on myself, and that's exactly how I see it as well. It seems like it's just this expression of our spirit and it shows us our wants, our needs, it gives us teachings, it gives us lessons, advice. And I agree with you when we're able to tap in and look at our dreams and understand what they're teaching us. And there is a little bit of a language sometimes we have to learn, but if we're able to, you know, pay attention to that, it does. It makes us feel whole. It's like this compact area where we find all of these beautiful pieces of advice that help us. So I really love that. And um, and now bringing kids into it, you know, how can this be beneficial for parents? Because, and guys, you know, as as everything on this show, you everybody always hears me say everything that we're we're talking about for kids, it's it's also helpful for us as adults too. So I love that. But with the aspect of our kids, how can it benefit a parent to work with their child's dream?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

Well, it's very beneficial, especially if they're having nightmares because you know you you get very upset to see your child going through, you know, stress in that manner or whatever. So the idea is if you work with dreams, dream life, it doesn't quite get to the nightmares because the child already is communicating with you what's going on and you understand better and you're able to talk about it and help them. So the benefit of working uh parents or caregivers working with their children's dreams is that they can help them work through challenges, development issues. You can be more aware if they're getting sick, because you know, it tends to nightmares can happen when they're sick. So you can be more in tune with what's going on with your child, because especially young children up to the age of five, they they have difficulty communicating. So you have to learn their languaging as to how they're communicating. And dreams is symbolic and it gives you a wealth of information, so it's really beneficial to work with the dream, and then as they get older, then if they keep sharing the dreams, then you are also having this uh relationship with them in which they're in tune with you're in tune with their inner life, you're validating it, you're understanding it, and it helps you then with that bond with each other, and also you're helping them develop that inner understanding of themselves from an early age, which is wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yeah, yeah, so beneficial. And it's truth, right? When we understand our subconscious, it's the most truth, um, the most truth of the situation of the matter. So yeah, I think that's really important. Okay, so let's get into these nightmares. Why do kids have nightmares? Why do we all have nightmares? I know that it's it's more prevalent in children, no. What's the difference between a nightmare and a dream, just a normal dream? And what is the benefit of of these nightmares? It's a couple questions there in one.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Yeah, well, they're all very important questions. So the the dream, the dream is coming to give us information. And the idea is that it's if if we don't pay attention to that dream, then it gets louder and louder and louder, and that's the nightmare. It wakes you up. It wakes you up to consciousness because you're not conscious of what's happening in in your life. So it's waking you up saying, pay attention, you know, pay attention. This is important. So for little kids, you know, that can be, oh, they're having they're fine, have an anxiety about going to school, they have an anxiety about the new teacher, they have an anxiety about change, because that's one of the top things is you know, making transitions. Usually children have and adults have dreams when we're having transitions. So we look at the the transitions that may be going on, and um the dreams are trying to process what's happening. So, what happens in waking life, we bring into our dream life. What happens in dream life, we bring into our waking life. It's a continual cycle. So if you work through dreams, you will find that those say you have recurrent dreams, same theme dreams, they will lessen. Or if you have a nightmare and you work through it in waking life, you'll find that they no longer have a nightmare. So they're all intertwined. So that's why we want to work with them because we can help ourselves so we get a good night's sleep. So we're processing the daisy fence during the night. We're trying to understand them. So uh children need more sleep than adults because they are still in the beginnings of stages of taking in all this information and making sense of it. So it's very confusing for them. So it's uh not not um it's understandable that they would have more uh dreams and more nightmares. They spend longer time in REM sleep, rapid eye movement sleep, dreaming state, than adults do. So they so actually the statistics are three to six percent of children end up with the you know, with night terrors, and fifty percent of children between three to five have nightmares. And then six onwards, six to twelve, then it's twenty percent. So so it's quite a natural occurrence that children are having, they're having dreams, they're having nightmares, night terrors occur, you know. So so it's good for adults to be aware of this and to be educated on you know how to help the child and help themselves then. And with yourself, with an adult, a nightmare again is wake up, pay attention, there's something happening and you are missing, you're missing this. You know, maybe you're repressing it, you're repressing it, you're pretending to yourself it's not that important, but you're but your dream life is telling you otherwise. It's quite surprising to me that you know, when with working with people, they say, everything's fine in my life, that I'm having these nightmares. Yeah. And I'm like, everything is not fine. Then when we work with it and we delve a little deeper, they are quite surprised in that their inner truth, like you say, CSA, their inner truth is telling them they're on settled, there's something not quite in alignment with them, their life's path.

SPEAKER_00 15:42

Yeah. And I think it's important, you know, even as an adult, like I still have nightmares. And when we do have the nightmare, the point is the nightmare is the teacher, right? I love that. And I know that a lot of people work with that idea. When I was younger, so we can use this as an example. When I was younger, one of the nightmares that I would have, it was somewhat recurring. Well, it was interesting. I would have a recurring themes and then I would have reoccurring settings, and we can talk about this. But one of the recurring themes was it, there was always people making fun of me. And this was when I was really little. Like I remember I was probably, I remember dreams from age three to five, absolutely. Um, very vivid memory. And there were always people laughing at me or making fun of me. And I was very sensitive. And growing up, now that I do my dream work, I know now, well, it was because that was a theme in my life that, you know, I'm still kind of working with, but I'm always worried about what other people think of me. I was always worried about people judging me or talking bad about me. And even as a little child, this was a theme in my life. So, for example, if if I was telling my parents about this, these dreams and they knew then they could help me with, oh, my daughter has some anxiety about, you know, how other people feel, and maybe she needs to work on her confidence. And so this is an example of how if we look at those nightmares and we start to understand what is it um trying to teach me or what is it trying to teach my child, I think we can really support them with that. So we really want to look at those nightmares, is something that I want to bring up. Um, you mentioned night terrors. What is the difference between a nightmare and a night terror? Is there a difference? Oh, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

There's definitely a difference. So there is. So with the nightmares, they're happening later in the night during ram rapid eye movement sleep, uh, where the night terrors tend to happen, you know, at the beginning of the night, and they are non-REM sleep. They're not happening when the person's asleep. So we have this safety mechanism within that we go into paralysis when we're dreaming, rapid eye movement. It keeps us safe, it shuts down the body so that you know we're not moving around, and that's happening during rapid eye movement. Night terrors, on the other hand, that that occurs in which the body is moving around. So a child or an adult having a night terror, they have their eyes wide open and they're they're scared, they're breathing hard, you know, quickly, the heart rate is beating quickly, and you can and they're maybe thrashing around, or they're actually maybe walking, upwalking around. And that's where you have to be really careful. Um, but they're very different stages of sleep, and whenever that occurs, that um is recognizing that that is something totally different than a dream. And whenever the good thing is, whenever the child or the adult wakes up from the night terror, they don't usually have any recollection of it. They the person watching often is more upset and frightened than the actual person, you know, child or person themselves that's having it. And the the way of working with it is they say, is try not to wake the person up because they're already confused. Like a little kid's really confused about what's what's happening between waking life and you know, dream life. They don't understand, those are different. So they're really confused. So you try not to wake them up and just keep them safe. So stop them from hitting, you know, hitting something hard, you know, put pillows there so that they can't hit something hard. You can talk to them in soothing language, uh, but not grabbing a person to like shake them and wake them up, um, allowing them to come out of it themselves and then recognizing that they actually will not remember anything about this event. And that's not unusual. That is that is quite common. That's what that's what occurs. Now, the idea is that if that's happening more than twice in a week, like your child is having night terrors uh more than twice in the week and continues to do so, then then you should probably seek, you know, go to the pediatrician and talk about this to put your own mind at ease, because as I say, it can be very anxiety provoking for the caregivers, but also just to you know to make sure everything's okay in that area. And sometimes these occur more when a child is sick, okay. That they have a fever, that it's more of a sign that they're they're sick. And with adults, they say one percent of adults have night terrible, and it could be due to anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorder. So the trauma, the reliving kind of the trauma. Um so so that's just giving an idea of like kind of the the normality of it that it does happen. They say with with children, three to six year olds, it happens, it says it happens in three to six percent of children three to seven years of age. So three to six percent in children three to seven years of age. This is night terrors, night terrors, right? So so that you're aware that, and then usually developmentally, by adolescence, they have grown out of it. Okay, so it can be just a developmental stage for some and that they grew out of it.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Okay. That was going to be my next question was you know, is this something that lasts forever? So it seems like the night tares, well, both night terrors and nightmares are a form of anxiety that we want to deal with. We want to deal with the subconscious to heal them, but the night tears, your your body is more awake, but your mind won't remember. And then the nightmares, your body is safe asleep and you're just in the REM cycle having that experience. Correct? Did I understand that correctly?

SPEAKER_01 21:47

Okay, yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. Got it. Yes, that's it. So the idea is that if we work with the nightmares and we process those, they will decrease. They will decrease or perhaps even go away. So that's why we want to work with dreams.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Yeah, it's interesting. When I when I started doing my dream work, um, I would I would always remember the nightmares, which I think that's a reason why nightmares are scary because they shock us to remember them, right? So we wake up, we have to face it. But it was funny when I started working with my dreams and I started doing more shadow work, I started doing more journaling and I started taking a look at these things that I wanted to heal within myself. My nightmares, I would sometimes have this nightmare again, but it would change. And the nightmare, the ending would be different. And so it was interesting. So, for example, I had mentioned as a child I had dreams where other people were laughing at me or ridiculing me, and that was a thing within myself. That's a theme. Well, as an adult, for example, when I started this podcast a few years back, um, in a spiritual sense, that was my first podcast. When I started it, it was hard for me to come out because I was nervous about what other people would think. But as I started overcoming that fear, came out with the show, I was working through it. I would have these dreams that would start off scary, but then at the end of the dream, I would defeat whatever that scary thing was, which was amazing because it's show, it's again, it's paralleling my waking life and it's showing me, Stacey, I'm healing in my waking life and my dreams are representing that, or vice versa, as we've been talking. So I just think it's so amazing. Um, okay, so a child has a nightmare. You mentioned if a child is having a night terror, so their body's moving, we just want to keep them safe, we don't want to wake them up. If a child just has a normal nightmare, a scary dream, and they wake up and they come run to mom and dad, what is the I've got two questions here. One, how can we support them? But I do have a quick question. Is it better to talk about them with that dream right then and there, or to just comfort them and then talk about it the next day? And then after we answer that, we'll get into how we comfort. But if a child has a nightmare, should we talk about it then or after?

SPEAKER_01 24:06

No, yeah. So right away when the child has a dream and say they run to mama and daddy, you want to reassure them. So you want to reassure them that they're safe. Now it's there's no right or wrong answer here. It's very child-specific. And it also has to do with their age. So, you know, having a young child talk about their dream and whatever, you know, and understand it, you know, that's probably out of their realm uh because of their developmental stage. But older kids, that's different. So it really depends on the child. And if you're able to reassure them enough that they can feel calmer and go back to sleep, then I'd say wait till the wait till the next day, wait till the next day to talk about the whatever whatever occurred. So the so the the way that I work is there's the four hours for working with with the child's dream. So you give reassurance, you rescript it, and then you rehearse it, and finally the resolution. So we'll break each one of these. Yeah, so go through them. So the first is reassurance, that's where you give the hugs. Now remember, when you touch with love, you are releasing oxytocin, which is the love hormone. Children need to be touched. We've did that, but found that through studies of children failing to thrive because they weren't touched. So, you know, just giving them a hug, holding them is so comforting to the child, especially young young children. Teenagers maybe don't even want to be touched. That's normal for their face. But giving them the hug, consoling them, and reassuring them that they're safe, and reassuring them that um that you'll keep them safe and that they're loved, and everything is absolutely okay. Everything's okay now, now. So we don't say to them it was just a dream, because children uh don't understand the difference between a dream and real life, it's all the same, same thing. So it's saying it's not it's not real, you know, tell them it's not real, it's just a dream, it's just confusing for young children because to them it was very real, and it was very scary. So you're just conf you know, confusing them even more. So tell you know, yeah. So it's um so reassuring them, giving the love, and hopefully they'll settle down, and that then hopefully they will go back to sleep, go back to sleep again. That's what you ultimately want them to do, and then the next morning, then you want to work on the rescripting. So you the rescripting is what occurred, like draw your dream. Okay. So if you draw you, if you draw the dream, you and they say it's too scary, too scary, you say, Well, how about you put yourself out up in the corner here, and we we create a boundary, you know, a fence so that they can't get to you, and then we draw the dream, the rest of the dream. So children tend to have dream themes, so they tend to have dreams about monsters, big animals, um, things coming after them, they're lost. They're the scary to them. So you have them draw it, and then you talk about what you could put in there, you could change, use your active imaginations, you maybe make them smaller. You maybe put that monster in, you know, in a cage, yeah, so you can talk to them. Maybe you put, you know, that you come up with ideas about what you can do. Maybe you bring in like a superhero that will take care of you and take you away from it. Um, so we try to stay away from killing the monster, okay. Killing, you know, animals or whatever, because remember, it's all parts of oneself. Dreams represent all parts of oneself, and then what we're looking for is empowerment, teaching the child how they can take control and make change in the life, their life, so that they are more empowered. So that's much more helpful for them. We want them to overcome challenges, to teach them how to overcome the challenge. So using their imagination to bring in um a superhero, you know, say they bring in like a policeman to help, you know, control the, you know, the the bad fillin' or whatever, or you bring in, you know, one of the Sioux tamers that comes in and tames the dragon or whatever, that is much more beneficial than oh, we're just gonna we're just gonna shoot them and kill, you know, kill them. That's not really um, we try to work with seeing that all things in the dream are like obstacles, and the child is trying to develop, we're trying to help the child develop the skills of being able to overcome these obstacles. So the change in their thinking about things, so the rescripting is helping them change the way they view the the monster, the animal, or whatever, whatever it may be, whatever challenge it may be, and then we move into rehearsing. So the rehearsal is okay, now close your eyes, using your active imagination, because all children have this, we all are born with this, and now we're going to focus on how the dream went, how you wanted it to go. So you're now friends with the monster, you're now friends, you know. You you carry the monster around, you've shrunk him, he's a little little person, and you have him in your pocket, and he goes everywhere with you, and he's your friend. Yes, so so you make it playful, fun, and you have them rehearse. Yeah, you might you might need to do that before bed because if this is a recurrent nightmare theme, like what you had yourself, Stacey. Rehearse that how you want things to be, and then the then the resolution is is there a decrease in the nightmares? Is there a decrease in these scary dreams? So then you, the caregiver, the adult, knows that oh, I'm working, I've working through this. I'm I am developing the skills necessary. I'm I'm you know, I'm making progress in this area. So if I make progress, remember with my dream life, I'm making it in my waking life. So it also helps you like see, oh wow, I'm I'm actually making progress here within myself to be more at peace within myself.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

So hopefully that answers no.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

I think that's beautiful. That's such a great technique to go through. And I love turning the monster into the friend because in reality, that's really what it is. It's that subconscious part. And and I want to bring up something that you mentioned, Isabel. If people didn't catch it, you mentioned that these are all aspects of ourself. So, you know, we don't want to kill the monster because then we're really kind of shutting down the teacher within the monster, so to speak. So I love that you reframed it to making the monster the friend. And I don't know if you had mentioned this or if I just thought of it, but even asking once the monster is your friend, asking the monster, why are you here? Because I bet that I bet they will get some interesting answers, right?

SPEAKER_01 31:30

Yes. And that's another, another um key point that we can talk about is like with older children or whatever. Like you can have them work through the dream in a different way. Um, so so you can use the key of dream, which is D or E A M, which is the details of the dream, the recognition, do they recognize anybody in the dream? Do they know anybody? Any obstacles in there? Is it like school? Is it where are they at? So they and then you want to go there for the E, which is the emotions. You scared, are you anxious? You know, what emotions are happening? And then A is for are you active in the dream? Like, are you passive in the dream? So say you're in the car, are you, you know, are you driving the car, or somebody else driving it and are you the passenger? Like, are you the one taking action, or is it other people are taking action? Because that gives you a clue as to that. That's one of the things that needs to be worked on is being more active, participating more in life as opposed to observing. You know, we see that with children often that they'll they'll be the ones that'll uh stay out of the group and watch before they can go in. So, you know, so you can be helping them with that, working through that with the dreams. And then M is for the meaning, like you say. What does this what do you think this means to you? You know, what does this mean to you? What's this dream telling you? What do you think the monster came to tell you? If you could talk to the monster, what would they say? You know, so so you do a little bit of role-playing with them, yeah. And as I say, make it fun, you make it fun, so you do, but with older children, you know, they have that capacity more to maybe interpret and understand, whereas little kids don't have that ability as yet.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

Um, I have a cute story. One of my best friends, she loves the dream work, and you know, she's taken my class with me. And so we, me and her, talk a lot about dreams. Well, she's got a bunch of little kids, all under, well, now they're under the age of seven, but back when this happened, they were like under the ages of six, five, very young. And so she she does not teach her kids about all the dream work, but it was a cute moment because her and I talk about, I love what you mentioned, the acronym of dream, you know, D R, and and it helps us ask who is this character? Well, what does this character mean to me? Uh, why am I in a car? What does a car mean to me? Why am I in an airplane? What does an airplane mean to me? And we start asking. So me and her do this as adults. And it was funny because her son came up to her and he was like, Mommy, I had a bad dream. And he told her what it was. And she and I, because she called me, we always talk about our dreams. And we knew exactly what it was. Like it was very um, it was cryptic to a child. But when you, when we asked ourselves, why is he dreaming of this? We're like, okay, it was totally paralleling something challenging going on in his life. And so the cute part was at the end of the dream, you know, he had this whole challenge and it was scary to him. And then at the end, he ran away into the woods. And she is a really big nature girl and they always go out in the woods together and explore, and it's a fun thing. And her and I have talked a little bit about this before, where she asked him and she was like, Well, what do you, you know, why do you think this, this? She did question him, probably a little more than you would for a young kid, but he's got he's gifted. Like he's he got it. And at the end, she was like, Why do you think you ran into the woods? And he goes, I don't know. She said, Well, what, how do you feel about the woods? Like, what does the woods mean to you? And he goes, Well, I feel safe there. And she was like, See, like bingo. And uh she was like, Yeah, because you know how you and I have talked about if you're ever feeling sad or whatnot, you know, go sit out in the woods. And her and I have talked about doing that for her kids. And it was such a cool, empowering moment for him and for both of them together. And and you know, I was like, this is why we want to do dream work with our kids to a simple extent. And I thought that was so sweet. I wanted to share it. But um, but yeah, looking at those fabulous items and symbols are so meaningful.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Definitely, yes, fabulous. And another technique, like it's what you were saying, it reminded me is you can say to the child, oh, imagine I'm from a fantasy island and I don't know what that is. What is that? You know, so they tell they tell you what the function of the thing is or whatever, and I don't know what that is, so tell me, describe it to me. Yeah, and it's amazing what information you get, you get from from from them, from themselves, that they're able to open up and tell you in a way that um that you yourself then can understand that you say what obstacle it is they're going through.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Yeah, and I think just talking about it, or like for young kids, you mentioned drawing it, that's really important. Or older kids, they can write about it too, or adults, you know. I I write my dreams all the time. But I think when we write or when we talk or when we dream, you know, you and I have talked a little, whether the child actually knows what they're doing, they're healing the system, they're making the connection subconsciously. They don't need to know it, but it's happening. So I think that that's really important. Yes, definitely. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

The healing is happening, whether um they're articulating it or not.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Yeah. I wanted to get back to the nightmare real quick. So, like when a child wakes up from the nightmare, when we are comforting them, have you do you have any other tips or tricks that we can do to help comfort them? I have one I wanted to ask you. Have you ever heard about flipping your pillow over to the other side? This is getting real energetic with this one, but because the energy from our dream is if you want to think of it kind of manifesting and hovering over the pillow, I've heard this and I've tried it. And then you flip the pillow over and just kind of resets that energy. Have you heard of that? I haven't heard of that, but I think that's a wonderful idea.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Okay. That's like getting out of the bed and getting into, you know, you get out of your bed and you get into mom and dad's bed or parents' bed or whatever, and you go to another place, like adults will do it, they'll go sleep in the couch or whatever. Yeah, it's the same idea is that that space is associated now with those emotions, and I'm now going to a different space that doesn't have those emotions. Yeah, that's great. Shifting the middle is much easier.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Yeah. Do you have any other um quick tips or tricks for helping our kids ground or ease during the middle of that nightmare or during the middle of that scariness? You mentioned hugging. Anything else that you think of?

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Yeah, doing the hugs and then, of course, putting in a bubble of white light, you know, envisioning that bubble of white light, then also bringing in superheroes, regardian angels, if you you know, depending on your belief system, to protect you, bringing in the protector surrounding you to keep you safe. Um also lavender, you know, lavender oil or burning a lavender candle, you know, that this the that in itself helps relax and soothe, uh helping them take deep breaths. And as you exhale, you let that emotion go now. You know, we let these emotions go. We're just releasing them, releasing them, and we're bringing in now calm, positivity, you know, time to sleep, sleepy time, sleepy time. And then you might want to read a book, you know, read a story, or tell them a story. Yeah, or tell them a story in which they're they're in a safe place, and it's you know your child, so you know what they like, and you give them all the all what they would love. All they would love, you know, and you just make it a nice so we're changing their you know, their act of imagination now into something sweet, something something loving, something safe. So you might even imagine the safe place, which we do for adults, but we do it for children too. You go to your safe place that you hit the woods, you can envision that in your mind because the the body doesn't know the difference between what's real or imagined. It's the same physiological responses. So if you if you imagine being in a safe place, the heart rate will lower the blood pressure, it will help the child, and it's good for the parent also to switch gears, you know, to switch gears from panic to like, okay, I'm calming myself too, soothing myself too, yeah, as I do this for my child.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

Yeah, really cool. Yeah, so switch the atmosphere with smells, or you know, I burn herbs if if you like that, depending, you know, there's allergies and things. Yeah, shift the pillow, shift the mind with the story, or and I love I love when you mention the story because we can choose what story we tell them, like you meant, you know, to make them calm or or to make them feel empowered. You know, I talk a lot about intention. I love the superhero bringing in the superhero because it makes them feel empowered and safe. All really great tips. Okay, so let's see here. Is there anything else? We're gonna end with a couple quick questions for parents. Is there anything else about dissecting the dream or working with the dreams that we missed or that you wanted to touch on real quick?

SPEAKER_01 40:47

I you know, the main thing is understanding that everybody within themselves has their own symbology. So telling someone else what it means is not helpful. That it's better to get the child to open up or the other person to open up what they think it is, and allow their act of imagination to come into play first before you start giving it's this, it's this, it's this. So allowing time for children and adults or whatever to come up with their own associations rather than like, oh, all dreams of being chased by a monster or whatever it is that you know that you're you're scared of a part of yourself, you know, that that's that kind of shuts down the the growth work that we want people to do for themselves, the child to learn for themselves how to work with the dream. And also we want them to have that relationship with themselves. So usually telling the child, oh, it's because you're nervous about school tomorrow doesn't help them. It doesn't help them in any way. It may be helpful for you to know that information, but it doesn't really help them with that. You doesn't help their emotionally, so we're trying to help them work through their emotions in that. So the main thing is give time because you know it can take them time. So you're asking the questions, open questions, and what do you think that what's that look like? And what's that does that remind you of anything? So you're trying to open them up a little bit more, so it is going slow, and in this world, we don't have much time. I know, so we're so busy, so it's trying to slow down and encourage, and like you say, Stessa, you keep the dream journal, I do also. Like older kids keeping dream journals, writing about their dreams, you know, encouraging them to do that, to have their own, to have their own uh book that keeps their private life, which is their dreams, and then if they rescript it and they want to write it, then they have it written down and they can go to that and reread it, reread the new version. So you you may have to reread the new version, the rescripting and remind the child if this is a recurrent theme that keeps coming up, just like with yourself, Stacy. You talked about it was a recurrent theme, that's quite common. So going to bed is maybe the time that you remind them. Remember, we changed the dream, and this is what it is now. Good. So reiterating that that will help them hopefully go to sleep and then have them imagine sleeping peacefully throughout the night.

SPEAKER_00 43:24

Yeah, no, that's really good advice. With recurring dreams, is there a reason why they're reoccurring? Is it because we're not dealing with it? Is there any science behind the part that reoccurs? Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 43:38

Yeah, it's like you're working on a theme. Like you talked about your theme was like other people's judgment of you. So that will be like a recurrent theme. So it will show up symbolically in a certain way and will continue probably to do so until you have worked more with it. So that symbology might change. I might start off with people looking at you and then it changes to it's a magazine and they're look the person in the magazine's looking at you. So there's a little bit more distance there than a live person. So that would show progress. Got it. So the progress would show in the dream state. But yes, there's usually reoccurring things, and you know that when you have these themes, like for myself, I have the reoccurring theme of going to the bathroom. Yeah, that's a big one. Oh, yes. Yes, that's a common one for people. Now, for me, that means needing privacy, needing space, needing a little bit more space, needing to let go. Because from the bathroom, we release, it means letting go of the energy of you know working with other people, you know. So it's just it's just a reminder to me that that's that's what I need. So um, so that theme will come up from time to time. And and now at this stage of my life, I have a relationship with that, so I know what it means. So that's why if you find you might not have that dream for a long time and then it's back up again, and it's like, oh, it's a reminder that I'm going through this again. So it's important not to be judgmental with ourselves and critical because we're having the same recurrent nightmare, or there's the same recurrent theme, it's recognizing, well, it's telling me that this I have more work to do on this, and that's okay. Yeah, that is okay. Doesn't mean that I haven't already worked on it. I could already have made a lot of progress, but there's still some more. Like there's many layers to a dream. There's many layers, and there's still a little bit more to be done. But that's a good question. I'm glad you asked that one.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Yeah, and and that's why I love this. The dreams, they keep us on track. You know, we fall off. Oh, we start having these dreams. Okay, oh, okay, now I gotta get back on. They they remind us if, like you said, we can form that relationship with them. So that's why I love this stuff. Um, okay, last couple quick questions. Uh, this one might be redundant. What is one thing you wish every parent knew about children and dreams and this whole dream state?

SPEAKER_01 46:06

Well, that it's normal to begin with. Having dreams and nightmares is all normal, so no need to freak out about that. And you are getting insight into your child. It's a wonderful way of understanding your child, it's a wonderful way of helping them learn to connect with their inner world. That means their emotional life. And if you begin this early, then they'll feel much more comfortable in talking about it and they'll form a roadmap within themselves that they have an understanding of themselves. And I work with adults that are still trying to formulate this roadmap. So if we get it early and at the beginning, it will help that not only the child but also the parent understand what's going on and be less at a loss for what do I do, be able to accept the different developmental stages and the different obstacles that the child goes through, and also maybe help them open up to their inner world also, and they're like you said, with your friend, their dream life, and be able to communicate with your child, so it can be a wonderful opportunity to create a connection that could last a lifetime with your child, you know, that you they call you up and say, you know, I had a dream last night. Yeah, you know, and they're excited about it. We're excited about it. It's like, oh my friend, my friend visited me. Let me tell you, this is what they said to me. So it can be fun, playful, and it's a wonderful way of building a connection with your child and understanding them.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

Yeah, it's funny. Me and my mom, and me and my some of my friends, we that we do that. We'll call each other as soon as we have a dream. And what's funny is because we do that, I think our subconscious, our spirit knows that. And so I'll have dreams on behalf of my friends or on behalf of my mom, and and I'll get messages to tell them, and it was something really important. And I think our spirits know because we're connected because we have that dialogue between each other. It will, if for example, if my friend isn't picking up on something, happens all the time. I'll have a dream that's very vivid and very specific and something that she needs to know. And I'll wake up and call her, and I think that there's something there. So she receives the message. So there's just so much room to play with here. And I think it's all so, so helpful for us. Okay, if a parent is listening and they are just feeling overwhelmed or worried about their child's sleep, what reinsurance would you give them?

SPEAKER_01 48:36

Well, as I say, try not to criticize yourself or judge yourself that you're doing something wrong that are causing these nightmares, because that's usually where all for, you know, all caregivers go and recognize that it's a normal developmental stage. And as I say, statistically we know the percentages of when this occurs, and to reassure yourself that this is temporary, it is temporary, and they will grow out of it. And it's probably a lot to do with growth spurts, it could be actually just growth spurts, or it could be transitions at school, family life, whatever. It's just their way of communicating, and that that's they're asking for the help with that. So see it as an opportunity to help them with these transitions that are going on that every child experiences, and that it's not that there's nothing wrong with the child, there's nothing wrong with them either for this occurring. So take away the criticism, the judgment about themselves, and that they should be fixing this and know that we will continue to dream, you know, till the day we die. So, therefore, accepting the dreams as our friends and with valuable information, that that in itself will help you then work with them and also be less intimidated whenever a nightmare occurs.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Yeah, perfectly said. All right, Isabel. Well, how can parents learn more about you and your work and how can they find you? Well, thank you for asking.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

So you can go on my website and ww.mindful options.com or Isabel McGrath, I s o-b-e-l, mc.com, go to my website for information, or you can email me, you can text me, call me. I also offer like a free complimentary um initial consultation of 15 minutes. So if you have a question and wonder if I could be helpful, it gives us an opportunity to see if I feel like I could be of benefit for you. So that's open to anybody that for adults or for them for themselves that have questions about their child or the developmental stages. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

Yeah. Perfect, amazing. And guys, I will put all of Isabel's links and everything down below for easy access. But Isabel, I want to thank you so much for coming on today and teaching us about all of this dream space and all of this wonderful work that you're doing. I think it's so beneficial for parents to know about this and for kids to work with it. I know it's changed my life, and so I think it can only be helpful for others as well. So thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Steus. Wish you all the best. Thank you so much. All right, guys, if you enjoyed this episode, I hope you use it to inspire those around you. And I will see you next week on In a Spiritual Sense Kids. For those looking to connect further, please feel free to send emails to info at InaspiritualSense.com or hit me up on Instagram where you can find weekly inspiration and updates. I look forward to connecting with you. This show is part of the Mindful Podcast Network.