Children’s Dreams
One of the most consistent findings across all studies of children’s dreams is the content of animal figures. The reports of dreams from children between 3 and 4 years old are the ones most likely to contain animal content. It is speculated that animals are part of our ancestral memory and children are quite in touch with that. Children this age usually only have a sentence or two and the dream is fairly simplistic. Often these animals are seen as protectors or helpers. However, the child who had the most animal dreams of all the children displayed aggressive behavior. Perhaps these animals represent the animal drives within the human genetic structure.
At ages 5 through 6 dream reports are double in length and dreams are a little bit more complicated. The main character usually is in a passive role, however, watching. Sex differences begin to emerge. Girls’ dreams are usually nice ones with friendly outcomes while boys’ dreams tend toward conflict. All these dreams of both sexes contain animal and family characters, with the conflict coming from outside the family.
At ages 7 through 8, dreamers became more active in the dreams. Boys’ dreams became tamer and more friendly and the preoccupation with conflict and strangers drops away. Girls’ dreams stayed relatively the same, with friendly outcomes.
From 9 to 12 year olds, interaction with peers in social situations is more prominent and family characters decline. Peer characters are usually of the same sex as the child. Dreams of conflict and aggression begin to preoccupy the boys’ dreams again. Male children have roughly twice as many aggressive dreams as do female children. Issues of sex roles are worked out. Boys dream of athletics and male oriented tasks and girls dream about acquiring domestic skills.
From ages 13 to 15, dreams become more troubled. The setting is more vague and distortion of the characters is prominent. Anger appears more often and happy outcomes happen less often. Girls have happier dreams than boys, but they still are more troublesome than their dreams earlier in life. It has been suspected that role identification is more difficult for boys than it is for girls because boys are forced by society to disidentify with the mother whereas girls are not under this pressure.
When children’s dreams are compared with adult dreams, significant differences appeared. Children’s dreams contained more parents and other family members, fewer strangers, and more animal characters. Nature also appeared more in children’s dreams, and of course there were more toys and such. They did not dream of cars very often and it was sometimes difficult to discern whether the setting was an indoor or outdoor one. Children also have more dreams about aggression being directed at them and most dreams had no outcome in the situation, positive or negative. Children also seem to notice color more significantly than adults.
“Children’s dreams are more intense than those of adults because the brain is practicing its event-forming activities,” according to Jane Roberts in her book The Nature Of The Psyche (1979). Veronica Tonay says in the book The Art Of Daydreaming (1995), “My own research and that of various colleagues and students suggests that even in three and four year olds, we can discern the beginnings of strong individual differences in modes of using make-believe as a way of dealing with the world. By adolescence these predispositions to resort to fantasy as a resource are well established and may play an important later role in the life style of the individual.”
Elsie Sechrist says in her book Dreams: Your Magic Mirror (1968) that children respond readily to their inner teachers. “Children as young as six seem as responsive to dreams as any adult. What has gratified me as much as it has the parents of the children is the power of a correctly interpreted dream to persuade a child to correct his own failings. Parents have admitted that where appeals and scoldings have been useless, a single dream has caused the child to put his own counsel into practice.”