The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships (47 page)

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Authors: Phyllis R. Koch-Sheras

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BOOK: The Dream Sharing Sourcebook: A Practical Guide to Enhancing Your Personal Relationships
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moment for both of us, and helped Jamie deal with his playmate better in the future."
Use "Dream Theater"
As you can see from Jamie's re-dream of "The Bad Boy Fairy," acting out various characters and parts of the dream can give your child a fresh perspective on its meaning. Physically reenacting aspects of the re-dream, as Jamie did in putting on and taking off the fairy's "mask," helped him "get into" the character and gain insights into the dream, which dialogue alone may not have offered.
This kind of dream theater can be especially powerful when other "actors" are involved. It is a perfect opportunity for family dreamwork, vividly bringing a child's dream to life for everyone, and it's fun, too! It doesn't require any elaborate sets or lights and can be a bonding experience for the whole family. That is what the following family discovered when they acted out eight-year-old Tommy's dream at their beach house.
The Golden Castle
I find a key in the sand with a note that says, "Congratulations! You have found one of five keys like this on the beach." I walk further until I find a golden castle. I open the door with the key and go through an obstacle course to get to a treasure. The hardest obstacle is a round grate: if you fall through the holes in it, you die. I make it through and take the treasures home. Then my whole family is filthy rich.
All five family members acted out the dream by calling themselves "the five keys" and their beach house "the golden castle." They also acted out parts of the dream, like building special sand castles and making an obstacle course for everyone to go through with a "treasure" at the end of it. They had a
 
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great time doing it and brought home pictures of themselves performing in their dream theater that they look at periodically with fond memories. If you have a video camera, you can also film your dream play and then watch it together.
Use Drawing and Other Creative Activities
Another way to help your children work with their dreams is to have them make a picture of the original dream and/or the re-dream. Simply drawing a dream, or making a collage with scraps of colored paper and whatever objects are handy, can help give a sense of control and diffuse the anxiety brought up by the dream. According to art therapist Ann Wiseman, author of
Nightmare Help
, having a clear vision of a new ending for a nightmare and drawing it can help both parent and child "leave the stuck part of themselves on the paper stage." This process provides a way to work with the fear, Wiseman says, and gives children a means to empower themselves. It also makes other options more concrete to them and serves as a visual reminder of what else is possible. That is what nine-year-old Kris did with the following dream and drawing.
The Alligator
I walk down to the dock at the edge of the river by our house. An alligator comes out of the water and grabs my big toe and starts to pull on it. I scream for help. My dad comes running down with his chainsaw and cuts off the alligator's head. I am so scared. I thought the alligator was going to eat me.
Being a psychologist, Kris's dad, Eric, was tempted to give the obvious Freudian interpretation of the dream involving Oedipal rivalry and castration anxiety. Eric knew better,
 
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Figure 10.3
The Alligator
though, and after listening to Kris's associations, suggested that he draw a picture of the dream. See Figure 10.3. Then Eric and Kris created a proclamation about "being safe" and discussed various ways Kris could get help in an emergency. That was sufficient for both of them to feel reassured, and Eric could still use his own psychoanalysis of the dream to make sense out of Kris's experience without imposing it on his son.
For adolescents, who may not be interested in talking to their parents about their feelings, making a picture of a dream can be an effective way of working through difficult issues in their lives. As with Eric and the alligator dream, we may be inclined as parents to want to engage in a long discussion with our children to try to help them, but that is not always desired, needed, accepted, or helpful. Just making a drawing of a frightening dream may be enough to defuse your adolescent's anxiety. Trust that your son or daughter will discuss the issue with you later if necessary, or that another, similar dream will come up soon that he or she is willing to talk about. Thirteen-year-old Maria did this when drawing a picture (see Figure 10.4) to go with the following dream.

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