Children’s dreams are little more than a reflection of their brain development and are less complicated and less emotional than our own. Children also spend less time dreaming than adults do.
These are the conclusions of David Foulkes, a psychologist who directed dream laboratories at the University of Wyoming and the Georgia Mental Health Institute in Atlanta until the Eighties. By bringing children into the lab, Foulkes was able to refute the assumption that children access a richer, more exhilarating dreamworld than their parents.
The dreams of pre-schoolers are essentially Polaroid affairs, featuring static images of things such as animals, or images of sleeping. Between 5 and 8, they begin to feature movement and social interaction; only around 8 do children see themselves, in their dreams, as characters in quite complex stories.
Foulkes believed that we shouldn’t read too much into children’s dreams and, even though dreams do resonate emotionally with our daytime lives, Dr Jacob Empson, a sleep researcher at Hull University, says that symbolism should be approached with care. “It’s a mistake to lay down the law about what other people’s dreams mean. I’d also worry about engendering more anxiety about sleep by interrogating my child instead of leaving them alone.”
Professor Delia Cushway, a clinical psychologist at Coventry University, says: “Dreams are not random occurrences — they mirror the anxieties and thoughts we have in our waking lives. But symbols don’t mean anything in themselves. A dove might mean peace to one person, and something quite different to a child that has been pecked by one.” Getting a child to draw his or her dream can also help to pin down its significance.