The other night my daughter woke up screaming about 4am. I went in and she was sitting straight up in bed, eyes blank. I got her calmed down and she went back to sleep, only to wake up 20 minutes later. Repeat, but this time she stayed asleep.
In the morning I asked her what her bad dream had been about. With a look of doubt on her face she very seriously asked, “Daddy, was there a bear in the house last night?”.
Yes. Yes, there was. Not really. I told her no and took it as a lesson.
I had been channel surfing and stopped on a Discovery channel show about wolves. In it, there was a grizzly bear that stole a meal from a pack of 4-5 male wolves. During this time she had been playing with her dolls on the floor, so I thought nothing of what I was watching. I am slowly but surely learning that kids, even at age 2, see and hear everything. The show that I didn’t even think she was paying attention to ended up causing a bad dream later that night.
Young children really are sponges.
