Understanding Self Through Understanding Dreams

Because dreams relate the conscious state of awareness of the dreamer, parents can learn a lot about children by their dreams. What is going on inside the child’s head is clearly related in dreams, so parents have a direct link to the inner thoughts and experiences of children through their dreams. It is of the utmost importance for teachers, and parents to be able to interpret their own dreams so they can teach children how to understand what their dreams are telling them. Dreams are a key to understanding self and more deeply understanding others.

When Linda was little her mother didn’t know how to help her with her dreams. She wasn’t satisfied when her mother told her to go back to sleep because it was just a dream. Linda sensed that there was some kind of meaning to her dreams. When she got old enough she began to research on her own to discover the meaning of her dreams. Linda now has four children of her own. Every morning she asks them three questions about their dreams. “Did you remember your dream? What was the dream about? Was the dream in color?” She tells her children that if they have a problem in their waking life they can ask for an answer in their dreams. And if something in a dream disturbs them they can control it.

Linda has come to understand and know her children and know what they are going through as they have shared their dreams with her. One of her children, David, dreams about his teddy bear and its extended teddy bear family. She describes David as the most sensitive and maternal of her children. Toys in a dream symbolize how the imagination is being applied as ideas are developed and matured. David’s dreams about the teddy bear and its relatives symbolize that he is learning how his own imaginative thoughts are related to each other, how one thought leads to another and what effect his ideas have on other people.

Her daughter, Cassandra, has a practical, down-to-earth approach to life. In her dreams she is a problem solver. Linda says that if their family is trying to find a solution to a question, like how to fix things around the house, Cassandra will tell her mother she had a dream about how to solve the problem. This is not only a result of Cassandra’s way of thinking, but also a result of Linda’s teaching that you can get answers to questions through dreams.

Linda says that her eldest son, even though in his waking life he is the most strong-willed, has the most nightmares of all her children. A nightmare is the subconscious mind’s way of communicating to the conscious mind when there is something in life that is not understood and needs to be given attention. In the case of John Paul, when he was a baby, Linda herself was young and trying to figure out her life. Although these are John Paul’s dreams, as an infant he was intimately linked with his mother on a mental level; therefore his mother’s thoughts of insecurity and uncertainty had a profound influence on his developing mind. By the time she had the other children she was much more settled and sure of what she wanted. Yet John Paul’s reaction to the issues that were a part of his mother’s consciousness have not been resolved in his own mind.

Her eldest daughter, Stephanie, often dreams about flying in airplanes or swimming with dolphins. Experiences like these are out-of-body or astral projection experiences. It is not unusual for children to be aware of flying in their dreams. This is because children are still closely linked and identify with their subconscious mind or soul. The soul is not restricted to the physical body and can easily move through time and space. Therefore it’s easy for children to leave their bodies during sleep and move through time and space. This motion is remembered when they wake as swimming or flying. Often they remember how free they felt as they flew when they woke up from such a dream.

Linda doesn’t always know what the dream means but she says that by giving her children a place to talk about their dreams she knows it helps them. They know they can come and talk to her if they need to. They know she will listen to them, accept what they have to say and teach them what she knows.

Parents who learn how to interpret dreams open an expanded world for themselves and their children. They can help them solve problems. They can know when their child is troubled and what that trouble is related to. They can know what their child is thinking that the child might not be aware of himself or not want to talk about with the parents. They can know how their child responds to the world — do they roll with the punches or are they more sensitive to what is going on around them? How easy is it for them to change or adapt to the changing factors of their environment? Understanding children’s dreams gives parents a more well-rounded view of their children.