Nightmares at the Waldens

Our beloved Patrick, who likes to term everything as "scary" has finally started to believe that everything really is scary. Scary bones (an anatomy skeletal model), scary dinosaurs, scary monsters, scary eyes..you name it. Except now, these scary things are coming out in his sleep and he's started having nightmares. Almost every night, it's the same thing. We put him to bed without much to-do, and several hours later, he's tearing out of his room like someone has lit it on fire, screaming for Mommy and/or Daddy and talking about whatever it was he was dreaming about. ALL of us are tired. This has been going on for weeks. I've done some reading up on this and am still kind of clueless on what to do. We've started reassuring him that his dinosaurs are nice and have moved his skeleton out of sight. However, he dreams about things that aren't even there...eyes in the flowers, eyes in the walls, monsters in the closet. It's actually a little creepy. I hope it's a phase. A part of me feels a little guilty that these nightmares started right at the time that I started leaving him during the day to go to school. Maybe it's coincidental or maybe I'm paranoid, but a part of me feels like I've shaken his self-confidence a little. I feel for him every night...it's heartbreaking to watch such a little kid so upset and not be able to protect him from it.

As I know for sure we shouldn't do, we let him in bed with us on the nights he has nightmares, which might even reinforce it a little. However, the nights he doesn't, he sleeps soundly and sweetly and just comes and gets us in the morning, with his list of questions from the day before. He has the memory of an elephant, which might actually be partially to blame for his unfortunate bad dreams.

Our poor baby.