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If your child wakes up in the middle of the night scared, fully awake, and talking about monsters, sharks, or something chasing them, you’re likely dealing with a nightmare.

In this episode, Allison explains what nightmares really are, why they happen, and how they’re different from night terrors. You’ll learn one of the most important clues for telling the difference between the two, and why the timing of the wake-up matters more than most parents realize.

Nightmares are extremely common, especially in the preschool and early elementary years when imagination is developing quickly. But while they’re normal, frequent nightmares are often a sign that something in your child’s sleep or daily routine needs adjusting.

We’ll talk about the most common triggers, including overtiredness, stress, illness, and the content children are exposed to during the day, and what to do in the moment when your child wakes up scared.

Most importantly, you’ll walk away with practical strategies to help reduce nightmares and support more restful nights for your whole family.

In this episode, you’ll learn:
— What nightmares are and how they differ from night terrors
— Why nightmares usually happen in the early morning hours
— The most common triggers for nightmares in children
— How overtiredness and late bedtimes increase nightmares
— Why content (movies, shows, stories, conversations) can fuel nightmares
— What to say – and what not to say – when your child wakes up scared
— Simple sleep changes that can reduce nightmares quickly
— How to help sensitive or imaginative children feel more secure at night

And if you suspect your child might be dealing with night terrors, listen to last week’s episode: 233. Night Terrors in Kids: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How to Stop Them

Wondering if your child is getting enough sleep? Allison’s free guides take the guesswork out of bedtime. Learn the optimal sleep ranges for every age so your little one can feel their best—day after day. Get your free copy now: 0-2 Years Old or 3 to 10 years old

From baby sleep to toddler sleep, daycare naps to sleep training—How Long ’Til Bedtime? is the podcast for parents who want practical, guilt-free sleep tips they can actually use. Hosted by pediatric sleep coach Allison Egidi, each episode delivers real solutions for every stage—from navigating newborn sleep struggles and weaning night feedings to helping your 3-year-old fall asleep independently (and stay asleep!). Whether you’re trying to make sense of daycare sleep patterns, craving your evenings back, or simply need a working mom podcast to keep you grounded, you’re in the right place.

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Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.

234. Does My Child Have Nightmares? What They Are, What to Do, and How to Make Them Stop
Before we dive in today, can we just take a second to talk about the insane spring flu season? I feel like I heard so much about flu A from clients and really everyone I know back around the holidays. And I thought, great, we’re going to get done with the flu early this year. And then in March, flu B just ripped through our area.

And I heard a lot about it and COVID from so many of my clients. As I mentioned in a previous episode, I am coaching my daughter’s middle school soccer team. And a week ago from when I’m recording this, we had 10 of the 18 players out with Flu B. It was wild. And during that same week, I had three clients in one day mentioned that they had an infant diagnosed with COVID. By the time this episode comes out, I’m really hoping that the spring flu and COVID season is behind us. And if you have a sick kiddo, I am sending you lots of healthy vibes because this has been intense. Okay, on to today’s episode.

Last week was a deep dive into night terrors and today is all about nightmares, which are different than night terrors. If your child has been struggling with nightmares, this episode is for you.

Hey there, Allison here. Welcome back to How Long ‘Til Bedtime. All right, picture this. It’s the middle of the night. You hear your child crying. You go in and they are wide awake, scared, maybe shaking and just randomly talking about something that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Maybe it’s that there’s a shark in their room. There’s a monster in the closet. This thing is chasing them or has been chasing them.

Unlike last week’s episode on night terrors where your child really has no memory of what happened the next day, in this situation kids often, although not always, but often remember that they were up during the middle of the night. In fact they may actually think what happened in the dream happened to them or that what was in the dream actually exists in real life. This is a nightmare.

And today I want to help you understand exactly what nightmares are, why they happen, and what to do in the moment. And most importantly, how to help your child have fewer of them. So let’s start with the basics. What is a nightmare? A nightmare is a vivid, scary, or upsetting dream that wakes your child up. Unlike a night terror where your child is kind of stuck between deep sleep and waking and isn’t really typically fully awake or aware of what’s going on, a child who has a nightmare is fully awake. They know where they are, they recognize you, they can be comforted, and a lot of times they remember the dream. Sometimes very vividly and sometimes for days or weeks.

Nightmares occur during REM sleep. So the lighter, more active stage of sleep where most of the dreaming in general happens. And because REM sleep is most concentrated in the second half of the night, nightmares typically happen in the, I guess we’ll call them early morning hours. So think 3 a.m., 4 a.m. not the 10 and 11 p.m. that we talked about last week. The timing is one of those really helpful clues for helping you decide whether you’re dealing with a nightmare or a night terror if it’s feeling murky. Early part of the night they seem kind of not fully awake, they don’t talk about it the next day, likely a night terror. Later part of the night, second half of the night, they’re really awake when you go in or they come to you awake and they’re scared and they remember the dream, nightmare.

Nightmares are very common. Research suggests that up to 50% of children between the ages of three and six will experience them. So much more common than night terrors and they can start as early as age two, but they tend to really peak in the preschool and early elementary years. Right when your child’s imagination is really coming online and taking on a life of its own. So why do nightmares happen? Nightmares and night terrors actually share some of the same triggers, which makes sense because both are rooted in disrupted sleep. The most common triggers for nightmares are being overtired, just like with those night terrors. Sleep deprivation is one of the biggest drivers for nightmares. When a child isn’t getting enough sleep or when bedtime is happening too late for their body, the quality of their sleep suffers and then nightmares are more likely to occur.

Also similar to the night terrors, being out of alignment with their natural sleep rhythm. So even a child who is getting a reasonable amount of sleep can be more vulnerable to nightmares if their schedule is inconsistent or if bedtime is happening at the wrong time for their biology. Stress and big transitions. So starting a new school, welcoming a new sibling, a move, a general change to their routine. Anything that raises their stress level during the day can show up at night as nightmares. I think a lot of parents can relate to that. If you experience nightmares, you understand that’s typically when they’re going to happen.

Trauma can also cause very intense nightmares, fever, illness, certain medications, including melatonin. I mentioned this last week in the night terrors episode and it applies here too. Melatonin can trigger nightmares in some children. If your child is taking melatonin and having nightmares, specifically if they weren’t having them before they were taking melatonin, it is really important to explore that with your pediatrician or just in your house, whether you want to test out how your child would do without the melatonin specifically around the nightmares. And if your child was having nightmares before, but they feel significantly more intense or happening more often now that you’re giving melatonin, I would recommend exploring the melatonin as well.

But here’s where nightmares diverge from night terrors. Nightmares have an additional layer of triggers that night terrors often don’t. And that is content. What your child watches, reads, hears, or is exposed to during the day can directly fuel nightmares at night. And I want to share a personal story on this front because I think some of you might be able to relate. One of my girls has always been prone to nightmares, which by the way, so am I. So she comes by it naturally because I’m the one in our family prone to nightmares. And early on I learned that she has what I would describe as a very active, very vivid imagination, which is a beautiful thing. She’s recently been doing some amazing art and writing some amazing poetry. And I found myself thinking back to when she was little and just how vivid her imagination was. But having that vivid imagination also means that things can really affect a child intensely. So when she was about four years old, I think I was really trying to think when it was, I think she was about four, she watched Frozen. Now in theory, Frozen is an age-appropriate movie. Many four-year-olds watch it and they love it and it’s a non-event. But there’s a brief moment, a scene where a large snow monster throws one of the princesses out of the ice castle. And that was all it took you guys. I swear this was like a 30 second part of the movie. And she had nightmares for over a week.

And from that point on, we realized that she not only shouldn’t watch Frozen, she shouldn’t watch any Disney movies or really most movies because movies are designed with moments of tension and conflict that really make this longer storyline work. And for her, any moment of stress on screen had the potential to show up in her sleep that night and not just that night, ongoing nights. And that lasted well into the elementary school years. And I share that not because it’s definitely going to happen to your child and don’t let them watch movies. But I think that there are a lot of parents out there with sensitive kids, creative sensitive kids, I should say, who haven’t yet connected the dots between their child watching something that seems age appropriate and then struggling at night.

And I should add, it’s not just screen content. I learned that lesson the hard way in a different scenario. When I was reading a book for myself, I wasn’t reading it to kids, I was reading it for me and I loved it. And when I read books I love, I like to talk to my girls about it because I want to encourage them to look for books they love and to see that reading can really bring us a lot of joy. So in my mind, I was editing the story down to be age appropriate as I was talking about it, you know, as I was reading through over, and this went on for over a week, the book involved a character who had been kidnapped as a child. And I mentioned that detail without really thinking about it.

And it wasn’t like I kept coming back to it, but it sent one of my girls into a week plus spiral of bedtime fears and then nightmares about being kidnapped. She was old enough to know that the book started this issue and yet she kept asking me every night what was happening in the story. She wanted to know what was going on in the book and this is where I had to really hold firm. I had to let them know that I made a mistake in telling them about this book. We talked about vivid imaginations and how they can kind of take a little thing and get carried away. And I had to cut off talking to them about the book, but I promised that I would share at the end if it had a happy ending, which it did. And I gave them a very brief synopsis that everything turned out okay. The fears and nightmares, stopped within about a week of me no longer talking to them about the book. And then when I filled them in that the book had a happy ending and that, you know, it was a good book and I was glad that it ended well, everything was fine. So nothing else happened. But I was clear that I didn’t get it right by sharing so many details about this book that wasn’t really age appropriate for them. So the lesson there is we will make mistakes and if we realize that a seed has been planted, we can change course and we can fix this situation specifically when it comes to nightmares related to content.

So let’s talk about what to do in the moment of a nightmare. So your child wakes up at 4 a.m. clearly distraught. What should you do? Unlike the night terrors where the guidance is largely just stay calm and wait it out, with nightmares, your child is going to need you to engage. They’re awake, they’re scared, and they need some comfort. So here’s what I recommend. Go to them, comfort them first, and kind of limit the talking if you will. So let them feel your calm, let your nervous system help regulate theirs. But I actually don’t recommend that you ask them, did you have a nightmare or did you have a bad dream? Because sometimes they don’t really know why they woke up and they aren’t totally wide awake and registering the dream and they’re, they could tell they’re scared and they’re dysregulated, but if you start asking about the dream, it really can help them hone in on it in a way that’s not really helpful. That being said, if they are telling you a story about this monster was chasing me and something was happening, you can absolutely validate that they had a dream. So you could say, it sounds like you had a bad dream. The good news is that dream wasn’t real. That did not happen in real life and you are okay. Avoid asking a lot of questions about the dream, even if they’re talking about it. So it’s not that you wouldn’t let them talk about it, but the more you ask and the more you dig into the details, the more vivid and real it becomes in their mind. So keep it simple, keep it reassuring, help them get settled back into bed.

And then you can give them a tool to help them go back to sleep and to help shift what they’re thinking about. So you can say, do you know what I like to do when I have a bad dream? I like to hug my pillow because I don’t have a lovey. And I think about something that I love doing. Like I love when we go to the beach and we build sandcastles or I love when we take the dogs on a walk around the pond. And when I do that, then I get to go back to sleep thinking about something that makes me happy. And then you can ask your child what they could think about. And so this gives them a tool to help them redirect what they’re thinking about.

And then the next day, if your child brings the dream up and wants to talk about it, you can absolutely hear them out. But don’t you ask about it and rehash it because that can make them more anxious and anticipate having bad dreams. And this is really important. If recounting the dream or hearing what they said during the night helps you find what the trigger was for that dream, you can mention that. So you could say, I think watching that show about sharks made your imagination get a little carried away. And then you had a bad dream about sharks. So we’re going to take a break from watching any shows about sharks. That doesn’t mean you’ll never watch them again, but we’re not going to watch them right now. And then your job is to hold firm. We don’t need to keep exposing them to the trigger.

Now let’s talk about what actually can help reduce nightmares as well. Just like with night terrors, that foundation, I already mentioned it, is sleep. More of it, better time, more consistent, earlier bedtimes. If your child is overtired, and most children who are struggling with nightmares are, moving bedtime earlier is the single most impactful thing you can do beyond figuring out the content trigger, because sometimes there’s not a content trigger and if there’s not a content trigger, this is absolutely the answer. So just like I said last week, even 15, 20, 30 minutes earlier can make a meaningful difference. So doing that and then protecting the nap for these toddlers and preschoolers who would still benefit from one because an overtired child who is not napping and then they just crash at bedtime is going to have a fragile sleep architecture and they’re going to be more vulnerable to nighttime disruptions like nightmares. So get consistent with their schedule. Irregular sleep schedules create the conditions for nightmares to thrive. Aim for consistent wake times as well and consistent nap start times if applicable if we have a child who still would benefit from a nap. Then consistent bedtimes or early bedtimes if needed, even on the weekends.

And you guys, this isn’t just something I recommend for kids. I’ve been prone to nightmares since I was a child and since becoming a sleep coach, I have cured my own nightmare issues. And one of the best things you can do if you struggle with nightmares, is everything I just mentioned is watching what’s stressing you out and trying to manage that, but also going to bed early. Whenever I fall into kind of a, I guess period, because I cure it pretty quickly. But if I have more than one nightmare and it’s usually because I’ve been through something stressful, which has happened this past year, every time I know if I just go to bed earlier for a few nights and I do some relaxing things leading into bedtime, I can cure my own nightmares and it works. This is something that can help adults to prioritizing good sleep hygiene.

So to wrap things up, nightmares are incredibly common. think 50 % of kids will experience them at some point. And I think it’s especially common in the preschool and early elementary years in the sense that it’s common for kids to be upset about them and to need help from you as their parents. They happen during REM sleep. So it’s going to be the second part of the night. You’re going to notice they’re awake, they’re scared, and there’s usually some telling of what happened in that dream. And unlike with the night terrors, it’s okay to comfort and reassure them, but don’t talk about it too much. And the most effective long-term solution is what I come back to again and again, and that is more sleep, good timing for the sleep, consistency for their sleep.

And specifically with nightmares, we want to be very particular for our sensitive and imaginative kids to be a content gatekeeper. Pay attention to what they’re consuming during the day because it absolutely may be what’s showing up for them at night. If this episode was helpful, I would love for you to share it with another parent who might have a child who’s struggling with nightmares right now. And as always, thanks so much for listening and I will see you back here next week. Bye for now.