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Dream
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Understanding and Interpreting
Dreams:
Dreaming and Babies
Understanding how we dream and why we dream
is vital to proper dream interpretation and analysis, and one of the most
fascinating areas of dreaming involves the study of babies and young
children. Scientists have known for some time now that babies, and all
other human beings, dream every night. Many studies have even sugg ested that babies begin dreaming before they are
born.
What these babies dream about, of
course, is still a mystery, but a recent study has shown that babies spent
considerably more of their sleep time engaged in dream sleep. In the
study, babies were found to spend approximately two thirds of
their sleep time in the REM state, compared to an average of 15%
to 20% for most adults.
In trying to understand the
importance of dream sleep to young babies, scientists have theorized that
REM sleep plays an important role in the development of the baby's brain.
One reason for this theory is that babies born prematurely have been seen
to spend an even greater percentage of their sleep in the REM state than
full term babies. Premature babies can spend up to 80% of
their sleep time in the REM state.
As babies become older, and the
brain matures, the amount of time spent in dream sleep begins to decrease.
By the time the average baby is one year old, the percentage of sleep time
spent in the REM sleep has dropped to 35%. This finding is thought to
suggest that REM sleep is important to the baby's mental development. It
is known that adults deprived of REM sleep suffer from a variety of
psychological problems, so it makes sense that REM sleep and mental
development are connected.
As a matter of fact, many
scientists and dream researchers believe that dreaming is a way that the
mind is exercised and provided with much needed
stimulation. Therefore, babies, who do not get as much
stimulation as older people, need more stimulation thorugh the dream
state. As babies get older and begin to experience more
stimulation from the real world, they need less stimulation and mental
exercise from the dream world.
Knowing that babies dream is
certainly important to parents, just as understanding that young children
often suffer from nightmares is important for parents to be able to soothe
and comfort the fe ars experienced by their sons and
daughters.
Dream research has revealed that
babies can have bad dreams and nightmares as well as positive dreams.
Therefore, when the baby wakes up crying in the middle of the
night, it may be the result of a bad dream and not gas, hunger of the need
for a diaper change. In most cases, comforting the child will
help he or she to fall asleep.
As children get older, it is
easier for parents to at least understand the nightmares they may suffer
from. Nightmares usually begin to occur by the time the child is three
years old, and they most often continue until the child reaches the age of
six or seven. These types of nightmares often take the form of a fear of
monsters in the closet, under the bed or in other hidden places.
No one knows for sure why we
dream, but the fact that young children, and even babies, spend much of
their lives in dream sleep is proof of the universal nature of dreaming
and the importance of dream interpretation.
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