Welcome to Your Child's Brain: How the Mind Grows From Conception to College by Sam Wang, Sandra Aamodt
Authors: Sam Wang, Sandra Aamodt
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up with children between the ages of three and twelve, either in a laboratory or at the children’s homes. They woke the children in the night and then asked what was happening just before they woke up.
At early ages, children’s dreaming was simple and rare. Only 15 percent of three- and four-year-olds reported any dream events after being awoken from REM sleep, and there were no dreams at all during non-REM sleep. The dreams that preschoolers did report were static and often involved animals: “a chicken eating corn” or “a dog standing.” The children themselves typically appeared as passive agents: “I was sleeping in a bathtub.” “I was thinking about eating.” At this age, dreams also lack social interactions or feeling. Preschoolers do not report fear in dreams, nor do they report aggression or misfortunes. This contrasts with their waking lives, in which they can describe people, animals, objects, and events around them.
At later ages, dreams take on more complex qualities. Around age six, dreams become more frequent and acquire active qualities and continuity of events. By eight or nine, dreams are reported as frequently as they are in adults, have complex narratives, and feature the dreamer as an active participant. Dreams also start to include thoughts and feelings.
The static dreams of preschoolers occur when their visual-spatial skills are not fully developed. For instance, children who report more dreams are also better at re-creating pictures of red and white patterns using blocks. At this age, children are also less able to imagine what an object looks like when viewed from a different angle. Such skills depend on the parietal lobe, which sits between neocortical regions that represent vision and space. The parietal lobe does not become fully myelinated until age seven, suggesting that at earlier ages, children may dream in static images because their brains are not fully competent to process movement.
What does this process tell us about child development? One potential answer is that dreams reveal the patterns of brain activity that are possible in the absence of external stimuli. In this respect, they may give you a window into the developing conscious mind of your child.
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Night terrors may be triggered by sudden waking. In one study, eighty-four preschoolers who sleepwalked or suffered night terrors were observed while they slept. More than half were found to have disordered breathing, such as obstructive sleep apnea. In this disorder, when respiratory centers in the brainstem receive a signal that breathing has stopped, the sufferer wakes up suddenly, gasping. In children, sleep apnea has several causes, including being overweight and having enlarged tonsils. Remarkably, all the children with sleep apnea who underwent tonsillectomies in that study were cured of their night terrors.
In night terrors and sleepwalking, sleep mechanisms do not fully suppress behaviors that usually occur in waking life. In the other direction, sleepphenomena can also appear unbidden in the daytime. Examples include narcolepsy and cataplexy, in which an awake person suddenly falls asleep or loses conscious motor control. An upsetting example is sleep paralysis, in which a person wakes up but cannot move. In this case, touching the person is usually enough to end the paralysis. Don’t be reluctant to do this—you will be rescuing your child from anxiety.
Another characteristic of children’s sleep is the need for naps, which is driven by a slow cycle that spans the entire day. In both adults and children, alertness and sleepiness are cyclical. Part of the cycle includes an afternoon lull, followed by a second wind. Until age five or six, the lull is low enough to require an afternoon nap. After that age, children are able to stay up all day, as adults can.
This is not to say that staying awake all day is the best strategy for grownups. Low afternoon alertness in adults may be a remnant of our need for a
At early ages, children’s dreaming was simple and rare. Only 15 percent of three- and four-year-olds reported any dream events after being awoken from REM sleep, and there were no dreams at all during non-REM sleep. The dreams that preschoolers did report were static and often involved animals: “a chicken eating corn” or “a dog standing.” The children themselves typically appeared as passive agents: “I was sleeping in a bathtub.” “I was thinking about eating.” At this age, dreams also lack social interactions or feeling. Preschoolers do not report fear in dreams, nor do they report aggression or misfortunes. This contrasts with their waking lives, in which they can describe people, animals, objects, and events around them.
At later ages, dreams take on more complex qualities. Around age six, dreams become more frequent and acquire active qualities and continuity of events. By eight or nine, dreams are reported as frequently as they are in adults, have complex narratives, and feature the dreamer as an active participant. Dreams also start to include thoughts and feelings.
The static dreams of preschoolers occur when their visual-spatial skills are not fully developed. For instance, children who report more dreams are also better at re-creating pictures of red and white patterns using blocks. At this age, children are also less able to imagine what an object looks like when viewed from a different angle. Such skills depend on the parietal lobe, which sits between neocortical regions that represent vision and space. The parietal lobe does not become fully myelinated until age seven, suggesting that at earlier ages, children may dream in static images because their brains are not fully competent to process movement.
What does this process tell us about child development? One potential answer is that dreams reveal the patterns of brain activity that are possible in the absence of external stimuli. In this respect, they may give you a window into the developing conscious mind of your child.
----
Night terrors may be triggered by sudden waking. In one study, eighty-four preschoolers who sleepwalked or suffered night terrors were observed while they slept. More than half were found to have disordered breathing, such as obstructive sleep apnea. In this disorder, when respiratory centers in the brainstem receive a signal that breathing has stopped, the sufferer wakes up suddenly, gasping. In children, sleep apnea has several causes, including being overweight and having enlarged tonsils. Remarkably, all the children with sleep apnea who underwent tonsillectomies in that study were cured of their night terrors.
In night terrors and sleepwalking, sleep mechanisms do not fully suppress behaviors that usually occur in waking life. In the other direction, sleepphenomena can also appear unbidden in the daytime. Examples include narcolepsy and cataplexy, in which an awake person suddenly falls asleep or loses conscious motor control. An upsetting example is sleep paralysis, in which a person wakes up but cannot move. In this case, touching the person is usually enough to end the paralysis. Don’t be reluctant to do this—you will be rescuing your child from anxiety.
Another characteristic of children’s sleep is the need for naps, which is driven by a slow cycle that spans the entire day. In both adults and children, alertness and sleepiness are cyclical. Part of the cycle includes an afternoon lull, followed by a second wind. Until age five or six, the lull is low enough to require an afternoon nap. After that age, children are able to stay up all day, as adults can.
This is not to say that staying awake all day is the best strategy for grownups. Low afternoon alertness in adults may be a remnant of our need for a
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