What do young children dream about?

Abstract

Young children's dreams can be a way for teachers and caregivers to share with children and an opportunity for children to describe and even draw dreams. In two different preschool settings, in two different geographical locales, 94 children, aged 3 -5 years, shared 266 dreams with a trusted, familiar teacher. Dreams were coded anonymously. The number of words in a dream varied from 3 to 157. Younger preschoolers reported significantly shorter dreams. Threeyear-olds, contrary to previous research, were able to report dreams. Over 80% of the preschoolers' dreams included specific actions, and over a third of the dreams included three or more actions. More than 36% of the dreamers encountered and struggled with a 'monster' protagonist. Family members, human strangers, TV/movie characters, and friends were prevalent in the dreams of young children. Scenarios differed by gender. Girls dreamed more frequently of family members. Boys reported more fighting and chasing. Dream themes of boys, compared with girls, were twice as likely to include monsters, wild animals, pets, and curiosity. Power themes were four times more prevalent in boys' dreams. Girls were twice as likely as boys to report joyful dreams.

Content analysis of 4 to 8 year-old children's dream reports

“…Resnick et al ( 1994 ) using morning interviews found no difference in dream recall frequency between the 4 to 5 and 8 to 10 year age groups (56 and 57%, respectively). These results are in line with the nursery/kindergarten-based research where the most common means of dream assessment is typically personal interviews (Beaudet, 1990 ; Colace, 2010 ; Honig and Nealis, 2012 ) or individual play sessions (Despert, 1949 ), some of which allowed for story telling parallelly to dream reports in order to avoid social pressure in favor of reporting dreams (Honig and Nealis, 2012 ). The only parent-recorded questionnaire-based study using a wide age group (from 2 to 16 years) showed that most of the parents rated their preschool aged children's dream reports as being short stories (57.6%, rather than short or long sentences: 32.6%).…”

“…Home, school, and questionnaire-based studies are also consistent in reporting the ratio of active self-representation to be predominant in preschooler's dreams. Dreams including active self-representation reached 80% in both the preschooler and the school aged groups in Resnick et al ( 1994 ) study and were predominant in preschool-based (59.4%) (Honig and Nealis, 2012 ) and questionnaire studies (56%) (Colace, 2006 ) as well.…”

“…In contrast to laboratory results human characters were shown to be common in young children's dreams at home (29% of all characters (Resnick et al, 1994 ), at the nursery (80%, Beaudet, 1990 ) and also in a questionnaire study where Colace ( 2006 ) found that family members were the most commonly appearing characters in dreams (in 60% of the dreams). Family members were found to be especially high in preschoolers dreams [main characters in 30% of the dreams (Honig and Nealis, 2012 ) and most of the characters in Resnick et al's ( 1994 ) study]. Animal characters were found to be less frequent than humans in all non-laboratory settings [13% of all characters (Resnick et al, 1994 ), in 43% of the dreams (Honig and Nealis, 2012 ) and in 49% of the dreams (Colace, 2006 )].…”

The development of cognitive and emotional processing as reflected in children’s dreams: Active self in an eventful dream signals better neuropsychological skills.

“…Although direct correlations with cognitive measures were not presented, these studies reported an age-related increase in certain features of dream reports, such as motion imagery, active selfrepresentation, representation of human characters, interactions, and voluntary actions (Foulkes, 1982(Foulkes, , 1999Strauch, 2005;Strauch & Meier, 1996). Some nonlaboratory studies also found a similar age-related increase (Honig & Nealis, 2012;Oberst, Charles, & Chamarro, 2005;Sándor et al, 2015), which implies a parallel maturation of dream content with cognitive skills. Other than the above mentioned studies only isolated pieces of evidence can be found that show possible parallel development between characteristics of dream reports and cognitive maturation.…”

“…This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. characters human, frequent interactions, representation of an active self; Despert, 1949;Honig & Nealis, 2012;Resnick, Stickgold, Rittenhouse, & Hobson, 1994;Sándor, Szakadát, Kertész, & Bódizs, 2015).…”