The dreams below, organized from younger to older children, all involve kids falling. It seems that when we fall asleep it is common to have the sensation of lightness or floating. After sinking feelings and drowning dreams, dreams about flying and/or falling seem to be the second most common category.
Some anthropologists have theorized that our feelings of sinking and of flying may have lead to our mythical ideas about heaven and hell or higher and lower realms.
Perhaps our life experiences, our fears and our wounds mingle with our love and our wishes to keep our children safe and sometimes result in nightmares. Maybe these dreams, as bad as they are when we have them, are a way that our deeper or unconscious self tries to work things out. Or maybe it’s all just random and meaningless :)
Thus while I have no deeper knowledge of any ultimate “Truth” than anyone else, I do hope my attempts at understanding and compassion for scary feelings might lead to some soothing for parents and children…
[Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
ONE OF TWINS FALLING 9 MOS
Missy February 8, 2013 at 6:26 am [edit]
I have had the same dreams since my twin boys were born!!!! They are nine months old now, and I still suffer from them. Basically, there will some sort of scenario where I either lose them (or one) or more often, one child falls. Usually off the bed or whatever I am around in my dream, but they dramatically fall & I know something’s wrong so I jerk awake and frantically begin feeling around for them. My husband wakes up confused because the kids are asleep & I’m worried where they are & if they’re ok. Please help!!!!!!!!
Bruce February 8, 2013 at 11:47 am [edit]
Hi Missy,
If you read through other dreams above you will see a lot of falling dreams. One way to see it is that the sensation of weightlessness is generated by the brain and the story we make up tries to explain the sensation. Since you know you are not falling, you imagine that the part of you that you love so much, your baby, is falling; and since you are helpless to stop something that isn’t actually happening (because you are merely dreaming) to imagine helplessness to stop the fall.
Psychologically, twins are a lot of work and it may feel like you can’t quite handle both as they get ready to go mobile. Hence your fear that they will get into trouble by climbing.
Deeper still, might be the idea that when you have tried to do things, or take risks or be great you have been hurt (by negative critical voices, or worse yet, not being validated or acknowledged). Perhaps you need to be seen, and loved, in your overwhelm and your love and in the fact that you are doing the best you can and that’s all we can ask of anyone.
Perhaps your husband needs to play zone defense when you’re all awake and you will sleep more soundly :)
All Best Wishes
^ * * * ^
1 YR OLD FALLS OFF OVERPASS
Tabitha June 16, 2013 at 4:09 am [edit]
Hi Bruce,
I had a dream that myself, my 1 year old daughter and my 20 year old niece was sitting on a what seemed to be a bridge overpass with a lot trees under it. I have no idea how we got there and why we were on the bridge in the first place but 1 year old and niece were playing and all of a sudden my 1 year old decides to grab onto the guard railings and put her foot between them. I quickly realize that the spacing b/w the guard rails were wide enough for her to fall through so I told her “No, don’t do that” and as I was slowly moving (for some reason) toward her to move her back from the railings; all of a sudden there was another little kid about 4 or 5 years old standing there playing around the same way but he or she’s part of the guard rail wasn’t as wide and before I could get to my 1 year old she had fell through and was falling off the bridge overpass, face down but in slow motion. I had backed away and immediately felt an overwhelming sense of sadness, fear, and shock from seeing her fall and that I let this happen, that I just let my baby die from being to slow to grab her to stop her or protect her from falling in the first place and then I heard myself thinking “see, if you keeping thinking things like this will happen, then it will happen” and then I woke up crying. I’m not sure where that other child came from all of a sudden as I have only one child and where my niece went. I’m at a lost for words as to what this all means…do you have any idea?
Bruce June 16, 2013 at 8:35 am [edit]
Hi Tabitha,
While I cannot be definitive on what this means to you personally, I can share some ideas and hope it proves useful.
An overpass suggests a bridge over trees and over whatever is below, and it wouldn’t be unlikely that either a road or a stream or some natural aspect of the land inspires the building of an overpass.
By word play, it also suggests a “pass-over” which might imply the wish to be spared harm to a child.
Trees are very spiritual, symbols of soul at the human level; in ancient times trees were worshiped and the cross, being wood, is a symbol of man nailed to wood. Study of anthropology gives much evidence for connecting trees and sacrifice; perhaps this connects with some sort of collective memory or horror about human behavior in the past—and our wish to protect our children against our own dark impulses born of our lower minds.
Up on the overpass you are with your child, but symbolically I would encourage you to see her as your own 1 year old self: vulnerable, small, playful and curious.
Your niece would symbolize your 20 year old self: coming of age, not yet responsible, not very protective of/or connected with the little baby. Here we have the contrast of the helpless and the self-involved young adult. You, as parent, are in the position your own mother may have been in when you were one (which is also a sort of pun: when you were not yet divided into parts such as girl, woman, mother, bridge, trees, etc. as the entire tableau of the dream might symbolize you in your own entirety).
A 4 or 5 year old shows up, suggesting that perhaps when you were this age something hurt you and caused you to fall, or regress in your development. Consider loss or trauma that might have affected you when you were 1, 4/5 or even 20. (i.e. did you get pregnant at 20 and not keep the pregnancy? this would then make sense in the dream; or was your mom 20 when she had you and she was too young to protect you?; or was HER mom 20 when she had your mom, and your mom was a bit traumatized herself when you were 1?).
Dreams of falling are the second most common that I receive, with drowning being first. Our brains naturally produce sinking and floating sensations and this may be the ultimate origin of such dreams; still our minds try to make sense of the sensations.
Your thinking about bad things happening because you think them is classic anxiety. Many of us suffer this, but it is illogical and irrational (much like primitive religion based on sacrifice, magic and superstition).
The overpass suggests a higher consciousness. In this way perhaps your dream hints at both a need to heal from the past when children have been hurt (by oppression, poverty, war, hunger, lack of compassion, etc.) and a need to help move forward together along this overpass, this higher level of consciousness?
Perhaps this dream, at a personal level, invites you to be conscious of some pain in your past (more likely feeling lonely and abandoned than overtly hurt; thus you fall from neglect, not from “sin”). At a collective level, given how many of us struggle to protect our children and provide a good life in the midst of economic, social and other societal problems, perhaps we may begin to wake up to some higher level, some overpass where, unlike your dream where all disappear in your moment of need, we might watch each other’s backs, and each other’s kids, a little better.
Guard rails might echo life in the crib, but also the idea that safety barriers protect us, rather than lock us into the road. Parenting calls for limits as well as love, and sometimes it’s hard to be “the bad guy” and set them (and we need not set too many limits with a 1 year old, but many more with a 4 or 5 year old).
By extended analogy, as our society matures, we are debating limits at a collective level (i.e. issues of fairness, privacy, health care, freedom to marry who we like, freedom from discrimination, poverty, inequalities of opportunity… if we truly want to leave no child behind we have to build the guardrail of our culture a little more thoughtfully).
Finally, on a personal note, your dream struck me as uncanny because one of my own personal saddest moments was on an overpass—a restaurant overpass my family stopped at on the way back from my best friend’s funeral when I was fourteen. The world was zooming by around and below me, but I felt like everything had changed and my innocence was over. That was right around this season, 39 years ago.
Thankfully your child is fine and you are fine. Our thinking things is not so powerful that it makes them happen just by thinking; yet our actual loving kindness and compassion is a sort of thinking that might help us move toward loving kindness and compassion in action. Then it’s not just good enough that our child doesn’t fall, it matters to us that no children fall.
Ultimately the best place to put our attention, our compassion and our resources as a society would be in support of new moms and babies in the first year or two of life. This is how to make people safe, secure, kind and thoughtful as they grow up.
Perhaps the overpass is a good place, so long as we engineer it to be safe for the smallest amongst us. Maybe we’re all building it in our collective unconscious—a place of higher consciousness that, like in a dream, is a play space, where we can think about things, but when we wake up no one has died?
Carl Jung said that God is like an island and religions are like bridges that all lead to the same island. Perhaps your overpass is your personal way forward. Go back into the dream, hold your baby safe and keep venturing to where the overpass takes you. Feel free to let us know what it looks like.
If I’m fortunate I’ll meet you there. Maybe we’ll all meet up there :)
Sweet Dreams
^ * * * ^
17 MOS FALLING/JUMPING FROM BALCONY (WATER AND LOSING PARTS OF BODY)
Shana November 3, 2012 at 2:40 pm [edit]
I keep having nightmares about my 17-month-old baby getting hurt, usually falling off of a balcony, but last night I dreamed that he was sick, he threw up, and I took him to the bathtub to clean him. I got in with him and washed him off, and all of a sudden he jumped out onto the floor and I saw that all of his toes on what foot came off in one piece. I was horrified at this and woke up feeling awful. I have two much older children, 22 and 19. I had this baby late in life, at 42. I don’t remember having dreams about my other two kids like this. These nightmares about my baby interfere with my sleep at least a couple of times a week.
Shana November 3, 2012 at 6:05 pm [edit]
I also want to add then when I dream of my baby falling off of a balcony, he actually jumps off, not knowing any better. It is so vivid and terrifying to me that I am afraid to have him near anything even remotely high. In the last dream, even though he was in the bathtub in my dream he jumped out. So my dreams are usually about him jumping and hurting himself or dying. In the balcony dream I usually see him afterwards on the ground barely alive but very bloody and broken and crying.
Bruce November 5, 2012 at 8:39 am [edit]
Hi Shana,
Having this child at a mature age has given you enough sophistication to be able to finally work on coming to terms with your own early life, which might have been a bit difficult for you.
Perhaps your baby in the dream symbolizes your own baby self. That baby “throws up” suggesting trouble being able to swallow and digest something (perhaps the emotional experience of being dependent upon limited, depressed, anxious or traumatized caregivers when we were young?). You take your little baby self to the bath, symbol of the waters from which we all emerged, once upon a time—the primordial womb. You try to clean the baby, differentiating the vomit (what is not self) from the baby (what is truly self).
Once clean the baby is able to jump out of the womb/water and be born anew (we see this symbolism in many religions) but now the toes come off. This might symbolize the baby ready to start the journey of life, but impeded by an injury or loss. Toes could symbolize anything from little parts of the self to little piggies who go to market, stay home, eat roast beef or squeal in terror while running back home (in other words all the parts of a kid, from adventurer to scaredy cat).
Oedipus means “hurt foot” but Freud suggested we had wishes to hurt or be sexual with our parents; I think we also often carry actual wounds and those wounds can heal if we are validated in them being real wounds. Our parents generally do not try to hurt us, the fear they will hurt us owing to their own hurts (and this seems to have gone on an awfully long time).
The second dream about balconies and your fear of him being anywhere high could be about the opposite yearning you have to your return to the womb to get a redo—a wish to achieve higher consciousness, to metaphorically fly, like Wendy and Peter Pan. The problem there is that children who can fly cannot seem to grow up. You grew up, parented, stayed with the hard stuff. Maybe it’s your turn to fly and have joy now.
I often wonder why nice people and quiet people have not fared so well in our loud and phony world. Maybe they are just wired for success in loud and brutal times and maybe you’re a bit more sensitive and you are good to go in this time where you realize that your early life left you feeling like you were bloody and broken but that in truth you are more than barely alive.
Maybe a new paradigm of success is emerging where we neither drown by our lonely selves nor do we succeed by being above other people, but rather connect in some caring and honest ways that actually work for the vast but under-represented majority who just want to life save, loving and meaningful lives and are tired of all the fighting, and competing that is bad for babies everywhere.
Meditate on your imagery. See what it might mean for you (I only offer suggestions to get you thinking psychologically, but also compassionately so you might heal your own past).
Either way—wishing you much better dreams, and waking times too
^ * * * ^
2 YR OLD FALLING DOWN STAIRS (AFTER MOM FIRED)
yareli January 9, 2013 at 4:16 am [edit]
I hope you can help me out on this one, just like you have helped others. I just woke up from a very disturbing dream :'( I have a 2 year old, very mischievous son. In my dream, I’m trying to walk some not very high stairs, but since I got something stuck through my foot, its painful for me to walk by myself,so the owner of my previous job,who recently just fired me from my job, is helping me walk up the stairs, and my 4 year old daughter and my son are walking behind me. Once i reach the top of the stairs, I look down the stairs and they are some very long stairs now.My son its running around and I told him to stop, but he trips and falls down all those stairs, and I just stand there watching how he falls down tose stairs screaming, and I start screaming at my ex-boss to call 911 . It was horrible. Thankfully it was only a dream, but it was veeery disturbing W.ha
Bruce January 9, 2013 at 8:05 am [edit]
Hi Yareli,
Of course getting fired from a job could make us feel hurt and angry, and perhaps you have not been able to allow yourself to feel all the feelings you have about this recent set-back?
Maybe the dream offers some guidance on how going backward can help us truly go forward.
From the perspective of the dream being about your own inner self and feelings, your ego-self, the part with which you most clearly identify, is trying to make it up tall stairs, but you are going it alone and it is very difficult and then something pierces your foot. This might symbolize how other people might not understand how hard things can be for you when you are injured and therefore it’s harder to keep going/climbing than for some other people. Our feet can symbolize where/and how we are going, and so it seems you need to heal before you can climb.
Stairs could symbolize consciousness and your wish to arrive at higher consciousness, or at a more adult level of functioning.
In several classic old stories a child is hurt in the foot and left to die in the forest, and whatever we think of Freud and his Oedipus Complex, Oedipus was written long before Freud by Sophocles and it literally means “hurt foot.”
The “owner” of your previous job is an interesting way to say it, suggesting you felt owned or controlled and not just employed; it this is the symbolic “boss of you,” it might show us that you have harsh and rejecting inner parent/boss figure.
The children would be the two and four year old parts of you, and I would encourage you to think about how life was for you at 2 and 4, as our kids trigger our old experiences to be felt once again.
You call your boy “mischievous” but perhaps we could see this as the part of yourself that wants to learn and is curious and is brave—the part of you perhaps who was not protected at that age and who got hurt (in the foot, in the beginning?).
Your children are your treasure, and when they fall down the stairs you are brought back to that past, that painful place and time when you were little and down and maybe felt criticized or hurt by bossy grown-ups?
You get your chance to scream at your boss, and that connects you to how you really feel about it, but since it is your inner boss, it might be even better to realize that you could say to this figure (after 911 has helped your child be safe) that you know they are your inner boss, and they must not feel very good or they would be nicer, and they don’t seem to understand you do do your best but you have been hurt… And since they have power in your inner world, perhaps they would be willing to teach you better how to grow, learn, love and prosper?
OR… maybe you will have a new dream where the boss of your inner boss, or a “good authority” (fairy godmother sort, or wise Mother) appears and gives you help and support so that you can feel better and fullfil your true potential. This, I would hope for all of us, might mean working together and caring more, rather than bossing each other around and causing kids to get hurt.
All Best Wishes
^ * * * ^
2 YR OLD (RECURRING AND PREG) OUT WINDOW/FALLING; CAR CRASH ON BRIDGE (“T”)
Isa November 21, 2012 at 11:50 am [edit]
I have been plagued by dreams of my babies dying since my now 5 year old was 2. My “daymares” happen at least once a month. Only now the dreams are of my youngest son dying. They are all very detailed and I ALWAYS wake up sobbing. One dream I had was of my older son who was 2 in my dream and at that time when I was pregnant with my youngest son. In my dream I was stabbing him over and over although he would cry mommy but didnt die. I woke my husband up around 4am hysteriically sobbing and I couldnt go back to sleep for hours!!! This next dream hapened about a month ago and my youngest son who is now 2 fell out of our window of our 2nd floor apt. He landed face up and was still calling out “mooooommy mooommy mooooommmy” and so I ran downstairs conscious enough to tell myself It was only a dream and he would not b there when i got downstairs and he was just fine when i would wake up. Sure enough I got downstairs and he was not there. This last dream I had this afternoon but here I am in a place where I need to be free of these dreams because it just sheer torture. My husband and i were in our car driving over a bridge when a car cuts in front of us missing us but crashing right into the car driving along side of us forming a T shape. My husband and I get out to check on the car to see both our boys were in thatcar crash. My oldet son who turned 5 this past monday came out with only a scratch on his head but i knew my baby was “dead”. I say “dead” because I still heard him talking to me. My husband wanted to go open the door of the car crash but I advised him not to as he wiuld not look as we knew him to look like and that he would be badly disfigured but my husband opened the door and I turned my face so I couldnt see n heard my husband crying n said ..oh my God… n i asked like looking for confirmation… hes dead … right???. But woke up before I could get an answer. As I write to u the tears flow from my eyes… please help me… Thank you so much. PS… i have a 16 year old and this never happened with her.
Bruce November 21, 2012 at 4:26 pm [edit]
Hi Isa,
I’m sorry for this continued stress about your babies, but perhaps some ideas will help break the cycle of nightmares.
You mention you have a 16 year old, I wonder if this is a daughter? I ask because it would make sense that your male children each have triggered something different in you, and each when they were 2 years old.
Either way, something about yourself at 2 years old seems to be surfacing now—perhaps because you are in a safe and loving relationship now and the little girl you once were is begging to be seen and truly understood so she can heal.
The stabbing imagery suggests to me that you yourself felt stabbed, or assaulted when you were two. This could be a metaphoric way of turning emotions into vivid pictures, but it could also be a way of experiencing actual trauma.
Were you hurt, abandoned, or abused as a child? Did someone important in the family die or move away when you were 2? Did you have a medical procedure when you were 2?
Falling out the window is another way of picturing a feeling of losing control and being hurt. When we are traumatized we tend to float out of our bodies, and there is both the wish to stay floating and the wish to be back in our bodies and back in life. Maybe life has become pretty good for you now and it is safe enough for your baby self, your spirit, to return and fully live life
Another idea is about truly growing up. In this way the baby has to die (or rather our own identification with the baby, hurt or otherwise) for the true grown-up to be born.
You were a much younger mom first time around, a kid raising a kid. Now you are a more mature mom and you are rising to the occasion through ritual death and re-forming, safer and more aware.
Finally, the car accident raises the question about whether you were ever in an accident (more trauma) or had someone you loved hurt in this way. In any event, symbolically it is your husband self (all parts of the dream can be viewed as parts of your self) who bears witness to the tragedy of your hurt baby-self.
Let yourself cry, this is where you attach and love. Before I sense you were terrified and not crying, scared out of your body. These dreams are your own inner psychologist helping you heal by exposing you to the truths (at least emotional truths) of past pain so that you can have present joy.
Happy and Healing Thanksgiving—I hope it brings you better dreams
^ * * * ^
2 YR OLD SMASHED HEAD [SUPER VIVID]
Kieri June 22, 2012 at 9:40 am [edit]
I had a nightmare that my two year old daughter was leaving with some one and wouldn’t give me a kiss good bye, she went up the stairs to our front door with my friends kids and a neighbor of mine opened the door for them I was yelling up the stairs for her to not open it because my daughter can not go down the outside steps by her self yet, so I run to the door and push past my neighbor who has now turned into a red haired woman Ive never met and swing the door open only to find that our 3 front steps are 10 feet high and there are more then 20 steps with no backs to them, my daughter is hanging between steps and crying for me when I try to get her she falls and lands on the cement landing and her head explodes… I turn back to this lady and look at her like did that really just happen and she is staring in shock at my daughters lifeless body. I race down the stairs screaming for help and telly the lady to get my friends kids out of there because they were all just staring and crying, Im trying so hard to grab my daughter but some one is holding me back Im clawing at the cement so hard my fingers are bare to the bone, I know she is dead her skull and blood blonde hair chunks and brains are splattered everywhere but I just want to hold her, just as I reach for her leg Im woke up by my husband who is freaking out because Im screaming so loud and hard Im barely breathing. i could stop crying I almost passed out the dream was so vivid that i could smell her smell and the blood grass and dirt. It took 3 hours for me to calm down enough so that I could tell my husband the dream. im still messed up every time I look at my daughter I start sobbing. Any one have any ideas one what this could mean?
Bruce July 6, 2012 at 8:25 pm [edit]
Hi Keiri,
Firstly, I’m so sorry that you had this terrifying dream—I can feel the sheer terror and anguish in it (and I’m sorry I did not respond sooner, as I was traveling).
My first thought is to look at this dream in terms of your daughter, and the red-haired woman as symbolically representing parts of your own self.
The steps might represent developmental steps (i.e birth, crawling, walking, separating, etc.). When your little girl won’t give you a good-bye kiss it could represent your unconscious wish to NOT have to separate from her, as as two she’s starting to have a stronger will of her own and to experiment with not needing you quite as much as when she was a newborn.
I wonder if you had some painful separation or loss when you were two (particularly something traumatic?). Your daughter hanging between steps could represent your own feeling of hurt in the past when you had to move, or start preschool, or have a new or different caregiver. Perhaps something that was so upsetting made you feel like you couldn’t understand it and this felt like your head exploding (or maybe a relative was violently hurt, i.e. shot or hurt in the head and your infant self picked up on the images but were never told what really happened?).
The red haired woman might represent your own angry or passionate self (it depends on your own personal associations with red hair), but the main point is that your daughter, we hope, is fine and it is your unconscious that is trying to be aware of your own pain about loss, hurt and the difficulties of transitioning to this recent step of being the mom of a two-year-old.
Hopefully, thinking and talking about this dream will mean that it does not repeat, but if it does you might want to explore your own hurts with a therapist. The reason would be that UNRESOLVED (i.e. not talked through) traumas tend to have a negative impact on our kids (causing anxious attachment. see:http://privilegeofparenting.com/2010/12/15/attachment-in-the-lab-implications-on-the-couch-and-in-the-brain/)
In any event, I’m sorry for this scary dream and hope it prompts any healing that needs to happen for you, rather than fear for your child.
Warmest Regards
^ * * * ^
2 YR OLD & 8 MOS FALLING, DROWING COALS
Kortnie July 16, 2012 at 5:26 am [edit]
Hi I was just ready a bunch of stuff on dreams to find out what mine might mean instead of thinking about how terrifying they are and how sick they make me when I get up. I’d love to hear what you think! I have two sons, one is two and one is eight months old. These dreams don’t happen all the time but they happen enough. They are always about my two year old, never my youngest. They also never have a significant place they take place in and IRS always different. Something terrible always happens to him and it’s very vivid! I can see everything even the exact facial expression he would give. I’m always in a huge panic trying to save him. I never see him actually die but I never see him recover. I always start not being about to breath right in my dream and wake up in a panic and have to do find him. He’s drowned, he’s fell from cliffs, even somehow kept having hot coals on him and they just kept coming. These dreams make me so freaked out all day. I would love some insite
Bruce July 16, 2012 at 10:04 am [edit]
Hi Kortnie,
Firstly, I’m so sorry you’ve been suffering in your sleep. One way to think about this is that your older child, in being someone you would die for, is symbolically the part of you that is having to die so that your next, more free and safe and empowered and empowering to others (particularly your children) part of you can be born into lived experience.
It is not your child who faces death (thus they do not actually die in the dreams, but rather they face mortal threats and they suffer; drowning is like the unconscious/watery part of the self, falling from cliffs might mean dropping to lower, rather than higher, consciousness, fire might be the too hot, ego-fire part as coals evoke the sort of old-school hell imagery of brimstone), it is the IDENTIFICATION with the suffering child that must “die” gently and in loving consciousness.
In an ideal situation you might train your brain to think that if your child appears to be tortured, perhaps you are dreaming. If you can become conscious in your dream you can think: there is the part of me who suffers, the part of all of us who is innocent and doesn’t understand and who needs love and safety and connection. In the dream, if you can become aware you are dreaming but not yet wake up, you can say to that child: I know you are the part of me who suffers, please let me love you so well that you no longer suffer, as I am your mom and I am here with you even in our dream; and if you are a wise teacher disguised as a dying child, please teach me whatever it is I’m supposed to learn… but I intuit that we have both arisen from a single consciousness by which this dream comes into being. Let’s both love the mystery that thinks this up and become free and safe by realizing our love for that which dreams in the first place.
Now becoming conscious in our dreams is hard. Another, easier idea, is to be awake now and love your babies and trust that life is its own strange dream and that we want to honor the mystery that makes us alive, and love our kids, each other, and each other’s kids and see how that works for us.
I’m happy to admit that I’m not really sure about any of this, but I can still wish that you feel safe and good and free and trust that you would wish no less for me or my kids. Maybe it’s simpler than we “think,” just to connect and love and see where that takes us—grieving together when tragedy happens, but celebrating together when kids exist and are safe in our arms and in our hearts and minds.
Jung said, “That which we cannot be conscious of materializes and meets us as our fate.” I find those words resonant and full of hope: if we are conscious that harm to our children is the worst thing imaginable, and dare to imagine that this means we love so much and transcend our lonely selves when we love so much, then perhaps we become safe in our love and compassion for what need would there then be for such tragedy to materialize, yet again, as our “fate.”
Humans have already hurt each other in so many terrible ways. Maybe if we “wake up” in this living dream and see that it is always our own Self we hurt when we hurt anyone at all, we might love each other to a place of safety and consciousness? Or maybe that’s all just a silly wish :)
Here’s to sweet dreams AND sweet lives
^ * * * ^
2YR OLD JUMPING FROM GRANDPA’S BATHROOM WINDOW
Heidi November 11, 2012 at 2:26 am [edit]
Today my mom came by and picked up my kids to go and visit my grandfather. After they left I fell asleep watching tv. I had a really bad dream and now I’m scared that if I fall asleep I will dream it again. I have also been feeling guilty about having this dream and i have just not been able to stop thinking about my nightmare In my dream it was a sunny summer day and my daughter who was about 3(she is 2 and a half right now) was upstairs playing while I was down stairs watching tv. All of a sudden I see some kids outside pointing and looking up towards my kids bedrooms. I get up and go outside to see what they are pointing and talking about. When I go outside and look up I see my daughter standing on the window sil ready to jump. I panic and quickly move around with my arms out to try and catch her. She jumps and I miss and don’t catch her and she falls head first. I run to her and she is not crying or making any noise. I run inside and I don’t know what to do instead of calling the ambulance I call my husband and I am crying hysterically. He is creaming at me to call the ambulance but for some reason I don’t. Its like I’m scared worried because I was not watching her. I’m holding her and she starts making these little lifeless sounds, like she is taking her last breaths and I’m watching her slowly die. Suddenly the ambulance comes and rushes her without me. The next thing I know I’m sitting in my living room with my grandfathere thinking of what is going to happen to my baby and feeling like a commited a crime. I feel so horrible and evil for having this dream and it really makes me sad at the fact that I was too scared to call for help and that i waited so long and my baby was hurt. Why wouldn’t I call for help. when I woke up I started to cry I ran upstairs since my daughter went out for the day she was not there to hold. So I started double checking for anything that she might use to stand up on to look outside. I took her laundry basket out worried that she might flip it over and stand up on it. Although I was cautious about that from the day we moved in especially because we live in a three storey townhouse. Please help me, I am really disturbed about this dream and I’m sad that the events happened like that. I love my children so much and I would be devastated if anything ever happened to them. To make matters worse the other day I noticed the lock on her window was broken and I meant to tell the landlord but I completely forgot. Since its freezing cold outside I haven’t opened the window to let air in I know it sounds terrible and its the safety of my child and it completely slipped my mind until today when I had this dream. Is my a warning? I feel so horrible I can’t believe I forgot to get it fixed.
Bruce November 12, 2012 at 8:46 am [edit]
Hi Heidi,
While I am very sorry that you had this terrible dream and that it caused you so much distress; the good news is that your child is safe and that you woke up to a reality not nearly as bad as the dream; the bad news is that it sounds like you have some traumatic anxiety to heal.
Dreams can have many meanings and my aim here is to inspire your own creative thinking and your own natural awakening to better times ahead no matter what the past may hold.
If we consider all the elements of the dream to be symbols of your own self (just one way of thinking, mind you) then the “three story house” implies more than one story or narrative. In fact, your dream speaks of four narratives: self, child, mother and grandfather. This is richly symbolic of the baby or original self—the one who needs protection, but also the one who holds our deepest hopes for the future for it is she who may grow into a wise old woman one day, a narrative in which you grow from depressed baby to superlative ancestor for your own future grand and great grand sons and daughters.
In the dream the baby is “upstairs,” suggesting it is at a level of consciousness higher than your own conscious self. You have a three story town-house and the baby in the dream is three. This makes me guess that something painful happened when you were three. Imagining something bad coming for your baby is a classic anxiety defense—taking the unremembered past and projecting it into the future (in the hopes that the past could be averted).
In simple words, when you were three it FELT like you fell out of the window, or jumped out in despair, then “hit your head” (which is like smashing away memory and thinking). It’s as if you tried to escape something and your soul floated away while your body crashed to the ground.
You never had so much motivation to heal as you do as a mother—and in this way parenting itself is a sort of soul retrieval. I’m not saying anything huge happened to you, but I’m also not saying it didn’t. Either way, you can heal by accepting that you are not dead and you are not a terrible mother, but also in accepting that your baby is not you and that comforting her, or protecting her, from what actually happened to you is not good for her.
By not having your baby to comfort your self, you had a nightmare. This shows you that you most deeply wish to work your pain out and not hurt your baby, and it also shows that the unconscious has a dark aspect (we feel angry at separation, and then dream up a violent attack on who feels like they left us, and then we feel guilty and responsible for these dark thoughts—this is extremely common and human and some of the cure is in realizing we are not alone, and in realizing that our dark thoughts do not make us killers nor do they actually have so much power as we both wished and feared as children).
The window too is a symbol of ability to see outside your hurt and lonely self, and also a symbol about something that has felt broken inside you. Maybe you wish to escape the lonely tower of childhood, but need to crawl down the rope of your own hair, like Rapunzel (with hair being a symbol of our thoughts, as they grow out of our heads). Instead of Peter Pan flight, the dream suggests you must come down to earth (symbol of Great Mother) but you must take the stairs, step by logical and realistic step.
This is what parenting is all about—day by day, separation and reunion repeated over and over until our children grow and are ready to become parents. We grown-ups must support each other to heal, to know we are not so terrible, nor so powerful, but that we actually just want to feel safe, free, loved and connected.
Sometimes when we speak (or type) we make a slip of the tongue or the fingers. It is interesting that in your description of the dream your husband does not “scream” at you, rather he “creams” at you. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but this slip might evoke two secret meanings: in “creaming” at you your husband co-created your little girl (crude symbolism, I know, but the unconscious is not afraid to deal with sex and death); and in creaming at you your husband comes to symbolize the good mother, giving you the very best of love’s milk when you are scared and regressed to the feelings of your own infancy.
Here is a silver lining—you feel blessed to have husband, child, home and love… but you fear that it will all be taken from you because you are bad; and yet this is just a screen, you must face that you are not bad but you were once innocent and defenseless; you must face that you are loved and you are lovable. This is so devastating that it makes us feel like all will be destroyed. We must see that the baby in us simply needs to be held and understood, nursed and soothed.
So… when you feel distressed, picture yourself as a little baby and hold her on your chest and soothe her. Forget everything else and all fancy analysis and just comfort the baby in your imagination.
Do this for a few months and send a follow-up comment on how you are doing. If it helps you, maybe other parents who come across these words will find power in YOUR words and your journey of loving your child and healing yourself will ripple out to encourage other moms.
All Best Wishes
In real life the baby has left with mother (the mother part of you) to visit the grandfather, symbolic of the “wise old man” (who sometimes can be scary, the Trickster, Shadow, Monster that grown-ups can be toward innocent children).
In the dream, you and the baby are home alone so to speak. This is a wish that your baby not be taken away by mother to the realm of grandfather. But the nightmare begins when it seems like you cannot protect the baby from it’s own depression and inclination toward self harm
^ * * * ^
2 YR OLD FALLS FROM CLIMBING FRAME
Darran May 10, 2013 at 3:56 am [edit]
Hi Bruce
I had a dream that my 2 year old and 9 year old were climbing on a climbing frame at the playground when all of a sudden the height appeared to increase before I realised they could fall.
I started to call out to them to hold on and was screaming for my wife to help.
I began to get increasingly more worried as I could not reach them in time and then my 2 year old lost his grip and began falling.
Thankfully my wife caught him before impact with the ground.
Could you advise what this dream may relate to?
Bruce May 10, 2013 at 7:08 am [edit]
Hi Darran,
I must admit I felt a strange feeling of what Jung called “synchronicity” when I read your dream… because just yesterday I was thinking about my son, now finishing freshman year in college, but I had been remember him just starting at his preschool for that little one-hour step toward school when he was 2… and I was remembering the climbing structure and how he loved to hang on it, back when he could best express himself with his big muscles and not with words, or feelings, or fine motor skills… and then I had a flashing image of imagining myself hanging facing my child… and then a monkey–my ancestral evolutionary “father and mother”
I was thinking because time goes so fast, because in some ways the child is father to the man, etc.
Thus it informs my response to your dream.
In any event, and with or without my journey across the developmental structure of parenting, I would guess at some meanings for your dream:
The children could be the child aspects of Self—you at 2 and you at 9.
The climbing structure or “frame” could symbolize development and growth; it could symbolize a way of looking at life and the world, at meaning and purpose, a way of “framing” it; it could represent the rat-race, the ladders to success and our deep questions about what is truly of value, about earning and achieving vs. being and loving; it could also represent a metaphor about consciousness… the child, that which is pure, in us that wants to climb to higher consciousness, but which also wants to “fit in” and “stay safe” (i.e. conservative vs. risk-taking).
Our kids grow fast (days take forever, years fly by) and this is shown by the suddenly growing height (it’s our kids who grow, the monkey bars stay the same, but seem smaller later).
This sudden height also is neurological: we sense dropping, we make up a story in our brain (hence flying dreams, or children falling from heights).
Your wife is the “good mother” (perhaps your own mother was not a reliable to “catch you when you fell”)
Your 2 year-old Self “lost his grip” (perhaps you had some emotional struggles around that age, things you would not remember but carry with you in terms of trusting love and the world or not so easily.
Your wife symbolizes your inner Great Mother in the dream (the ocean, the ancestors, the earth, the bear… the uber-symbol of “you can handle it” for it is the loving and safe you inside, the one that makes it okay for the child you to reach for the stars… and your ego self is the dad who loves, who does his best, who must struggle to integrate all these pieces into a coherent Self… and then we all have to integrate our selves together into a world—one that catches all our children if they lose their grip, so they can learn to climb to a higher consciousness: Love
All Best!
^ * * * ^
2 1/2 YR OLD FALLING OUT WINDOW
Joanne May 29, 2012 at 4:29 am [edit]
Hi,
I stumbled upon your article as I was looking for some answers as to my night mares (and day mares) that I am having. The main night time one is where my two and a half year old daughter is standing on the window sill of the bay window in her bedroom. She then turns and falls out, the dream then flips to picking out a small coffin and watching her funeral procession. I wake up in tears, usual in the small hours of the morning. The main day a mare (if there is such a thing) is where my daughter is running towards me, this may actually be happening at the time, in real life. Then I see in my mind that she trips, falls and hits her head and then she dies. There have been some life changing events in our family over the past 2 years, the death of my grandma (who I was very close too), being diagnosed with cancer (although now in remission) and my husband refusing to have a second child. Are these related to these awful and very vivid nightmares? I am having a hard time dealing with the dream that I will lose my daughter.
Bruce May 29, 2012 at 10:19 am [edit]
Hi Joanne,
Firstly, let me say that I am so sorry for what you have actually faced in recent times—the loss of your grandmother and facing cancer (I’m pleased to hear your prognosis is good).
Taken together with your dreams, perhaps your psyche (deeper truest Self) is working to help you be more fully conscious about life? Images of your child falling and then selecting a small casket could be seen as symbolic of how, in the journey of individuation (becoming our true Self) the little girl aspect (Puer/Puella in Latin, Peter Pan in pop culture) must die in order for the woman to be born.
While none of us know what the future will bring, this dream may be more about trying to integrate the painful past into awakened, compassionate, courageous, loving consciousness than it is any sort of premonition. Given that Jung suggests that it is precisely that which we cannot be conscious of which materializes and meets us as our fate, if we can be conscious of our losses, and perhaps even the productive aspects of pain (tends to awaken deeper parts of us) then we can become free and more truly alive.
I would not rule out the possibility that you experienced some sort of trauma or loss when you were around two (perhaps something as subtle as reminding your mother or father of something that they themselves had lost or been hurt by when they were two). The cycle of trauma often repeats across generations until we become conscious and release it.
As for having another child, perhaps if your partner sees that you have crossed to safety yourself, they will be more open to the idea of welcoming new life, rather than an unconscious insurance policy meant to hedge against losing what we already have. If we treasure what we have, and perhaps recognize that your husband may be carrying the part of you that does not want to risk again, and your grandmother carrying the wise and strong part of you that your conscious self feels to be gone, all your spirit might return to you and help you across this developmental threshold.
While easier said than done, if you find yourself confronting a nightmare, ask yourself if you might be dreaming. If so (i.e. you find you can fly) then try to commune with the dream by asking whoever you meet (i.e. the funeral home director), “Okay, you’re the part of me who is involved with this sad business. What is it you are trying to have me understand or learn?” Perhaps your grandmother will show up in your dream and give you her full blessing to carry on loving those in your world and trusting that your dream world is real in its own way, and important, and there all sorts of things can happen and reverse themselves and your grandmother can become your fairy godmother and you can be freed from the deep dark sleepy castle of your own life until this point.
Finally, if you don’t know the work of Miyazaki, the Japanese animator/filmmaker, I would highly recommend any or all of them as enchanting and transformative for the eternal kid in all of us.
Hope these ideas help and wishing you positive dreams and waking life as well.
Warmest Regards
^ * * * ^
3 YR OLD FALLING OFF CLOTHING RACK LADDER
Paula October 9, 2012 at 6:52 pm [edit]
Hi
I keep having these awful dreams which always involve my 3 year old son dying the worst possible way. Last night’s dream was that my son and I were at a clothing store and he climbed this clothing rack that I guess was something like a ladder, so when I noticed him up there I ask him to come down carefully and as he is taking that 1st step down he misses it falling down head first; now he has busted his head open and there is just blood accumulating around him; after I see this I just know he is dead and I immediately wake up and see him sound asleep next to me. This is just one of many recurring dreams, they are all about him dying either how I described before or falling on his back and breaking his neck. why do I have these awful dreams?
Thank you
Bruce October 9, 2012 at 8:45 pm [edit]
Hi Paula,
View your kid in these dreams as symbolic of your own self at 3. A clothes rack is symbolic of costumes and masks, the image we put on to deal with the world (in contrast to our truest selves). The Ladder might symbolize rising, or in this case descending, consciousness.
You are being led backward down the ladder of your memories to three, when you were “hurt in your head” (i.e. either physically or with painful thoughts/emotions/experiences). In other dreams the kid’s “back” is hurt, confirming the sense that “back” is in the past. Finally, the neck is what connects, or separates, brain and heart.
You are struggling to realize how hurt you were in the past. You must both think about it (i.e. fully realize it) and you must FEEL it, which is painful, but also it is how we heal.
You need compassion, from yourself, and from others, and you will heal and grow less haunted by the pain of the past.
Or so I hope
^ * * * ^
3 YR OLD (REGRESS FROM 7) HIGH BLUE BRIDGE (ALSO WATER) [*WISDOM DREAM LUCID DREAM HOW TO HELP]
Diana October 22, 2012 at 3:53 am [edit]
Hi Bruce! Thank you for your help :). I just had a dream and I cant go back to sleep. I was on a very high blue bridge at least 1000 feet over water. On the bridge with me was my mom, my boyfriend and my daughter from a previous marriage. In my dream we are walking across in a straight line and my boyfriend is helping my daughter with her fear of crossing.
He leads her in front of me, lets go of her hand and as I am watching my daughter cross i see a broken piece of wood on the floor. I go to grab my daughter but its too late. I watched her fall all the way down.
Surprisingly enough, I felt like I was semi conscious in my dream because i could hear myself think and i still knew i was sleeping. So as she was falling i didnt wake u because i kept telling myself it was a dream and she.is right next to me. when my daughter hits the water, she doesnt even dunk in because her diaper is helping her float. She even said mommy arent you coming? So i jumped in and remembered being alive but when i was trying to save her and swim we both started sinking.
Before i could wake up my dream starts over from the part where she falls off the bridge. This time i jump in after right before she hits the bottom. My dream starts over again from the same point. This time I jumped in immediately after her, caught her in the air on the way down and talking to her telling her whats happening and what we are going to do. I cradled her under me in fetal position told her.i would tell her when to hold her breath and we hit the water. We dunked in and i saw us coming back up but the feeling my body had when we hit that water was so real i woke up in sweat.
My daughter will be seven next month. The first time she fell she looked about 3 in diapers but she wasnt scares when she fell. Second time she was a little older and a little more scared. The third time she was like she is now and she was terrified.
Can you please help interpret this dream? Thank you!
Bruce October 24, 2012 at 8:18 am [edit]
Hi Diana,
Firstly, I would encourage you to notice the brilliant and loving way in which you deal with this dream—as you are having it, and after waking. In other words you are completely devoted to your child and your love, courage and commitment bodes well for your daughter and for yourself.
To explain… (which is what men do, but keep in mind it’s not as healing as what moms do: which is jump off bridges to rescue children, even if it’s in the imagined world of dreams)
The bridge is a symbol of connecting things, perhaps two bodies of land, but perhaps two states of mind (safe and not safe) or two stages of life (childhood and adulthood).
You are making the crossing with those you love. Symbolically this is your Mother (inner mother aspect), your boyfriend (that “you complete me” aspect which Jung called the “Animus” and could be thought of as something like the best-friend/soul-mate or even the soul itself that makes us feel alive), the child is symbolically your own child aspect (and we all have this, and she must be treasured, but we must not try to BE the child, any more than we, in waking life should try to BE the hero or the Supermom).
The bridge is blue. Blue could signify sadness or depression, but also sky and, at a thousand feet up, higher consciousness. Maybe your imagination places the bridge so high to help us see that the down-to-earth water (the Great Mother, the Collective Unconscious, has been too much to handle—and it is too much to handle all alone. We are not meant to be alone, or think ourselves utterly separate from each other or from Mother Nature).
Blue can also be connected with finding our voice, creativity and self-expression. Your unconscious creates this lovely, albeit scary, dream as a work of imagined art—a play in which you are working out the drama of healing, loving, risking and crossing to safety.
Your boyfriend (lover-man self) “lets go” of your child-self’s hand, suggesting that he wants to hold YOUR hand in life, be a grown-up partner to a grown-up woman. Remember, it is YOUR unconscious that created the dream, so deep down, you want this too. Symbolically, we must die as children to be born as grown-ups (but when we do, we may recover our “child-mind” which is the core of our creativity and joy–and playful courage and sense of adventure).
The “broken piece of wood” symbolizes something in the soul (wood is symbolic of soul) that has been wounded. This is symbolic of trauma or loss or “falling” and the dream suggests this was a repeating pattern (in diapers at three suggesting a delay in development, in being able to deal with our own shit to put it bluntly; we all struggle with this, the key is not feeling ashamed about it).
From here you can fill in the pieces; baby asking if mommy is coming (to join her, or become re-united psychologically between hurt child and able, brave mother).
You manage to re-do several times, intervening earlier in time (i.e. your inner mother is going back in time, in imagination, and saving baby from disaster by way of consciousness). Instead of taking baby on the high bridge, you see that you must join baby in the lower water.
Tao Te Ching: Water, in preferring low places, is above all things.
Be like water and you connect with the renewing power of the Great Mother, source of things.
Water does not drown.
The chronology shows us how you got more scared as you got older, now you are going back and connecting with the earlier you, which makes you more conscious, more integrated and empowered—more able to love (your mom, your boyfriend, your child).
Good for you ;)
All Best Wishes
^ * * * ^
3 YR OLD FALLS OUT WINDOW
Tiffany March 6, 2013 at 8:07 am [edit]
I don’t generally remember my dreams, but I do remember waking up, and falling back to sleep and the dream carried on.
I’m not sure what house we were in, but it felt like home.
My 4 kids were playing in a room upstairs, and I closed the window (its the kind that you wind open/closed and it opens outwards, if you know the kind… it case its important) then all of a sudden, I was outside looking up, I felt like I was waiting for someone to come, or about to go somewhere. As I look up I start yelling to my oldest (who is 7) to close the window, he’s not paying attention and my daughter (who is 3) stood up on the window sill and fell. She rolled onto a porch roof, I tried to catch her, I was right there, but I didn’t. She landed on the winding walk way and wasn’t moving. She was barely breathing. He face was swollen and bruised on her right cheek. I screamed for my hubby, and then she started to sit up. I noticed as she was laying on the ground she looked younger (like around 6 months old or so) and when we brought her into the house and laid her on the couch she had a siezer. Somehow an ambulance was called and I knew it was called, but I never called, and my hubby never called. It took forever to show up. Then my mind goes blank and I remember being in the hospital asking if my daughter was there yet. I remember seeing her gernie come in, but there were too many people around to see her and then a few minutes later more nurses were running in with a heart difibulater. All I remember after that is being in the hallway crying and screaming hysterically. Then I woke up.
Bruce March 6, 2013 at 4:13 pm [edit]
Hi Tiffany,
As you may see from reading other dreams in the thread, it may be useful to reconsider this dream in terms of your Self divided into characters and situation.
The “home” might be a symbol of all of the parts of you together: the Self (as opposed to your conscious identity, the self).
Your “kids” are “upstairs” symbolizing your innocence and your treasures are at a higher level of consciousness than your ego-self, and that they are “opening the window” to a new level of understanding, which, unfortunately, might be about realizing how hurt you have been in the past.
Your 3 year old self falls out the window and you, as you are now, are “unable to catch her” (i.e. to fully grasp, protect, understand and heal her). Thus your nightmare prompts you to action, to seeking understanding (and I am honored to meet you in this circumstance, but even I would be your symbolic helper person who you meet through me, but discover within your Self)
Your child self “falls” (i.e. regresses back in time) to six months (think about losses and injuries dating to when you were that age, grandparents deaths, parent quarrels, illness for yourself/hospitalization?).
She falls on “the winding walk way” (symbol of the path of life and learning? Your yellow brick road of trials and tribulations).
You “bring her in the house” now at a lower level, street level, but into your conscious Self. You witness the horror (i.e. move past denial into recognition, from which healing can begin), thus some unknown part of you “calls the ambulance” (i.e. is able to ask for help, unlike as a child when you could not).
She has a seizure, which could symbolize losing consciouness, perhaps meaning that you were “unaware about what was happening to you” when you were tiny.
Wondering “if you daughter is there yet” at the hospital could also relate to birthing her in the first instance, three years ago, but also to your own “psychological birth” as opposed to just physical birth.
My sense is that you are in a healing process, that you are fully here, now that you are a mom, and you are loved, loving and strong enough to have your inner baby come back to life (the difibulater) which could mean a “heart awakening” to your fullest love, to the realization that you are lovable (when we doubt this, and many of us do, we are unhappy and anxious).
Let the love of your children and husband and self in and see if you don’t have better dreams (and a happy waking life too, we hope).
All Best Wishes
^ * * * ^
4 YR OLD FALLING OFF CHAIR IN MOM’S MOM’S KITCHEN [THERE U GO]
Kelly October 21, 2012 at 6:10 am [edit]
Hello,
I have had 2 of these dreams within the past year. In last nights dream my 4 year old daughter was climbing on a chair in my mother’s breakfast area and I reached to grab her and to get her down. I had her ankle and she fell to the right and I could not catch her. My mother was standing there and didn’t help and my daughter hit the floor and her head exploded and her brains came out. I screamed out for my brother who died years ago and picked my daughter up and was holding her and running upstairs to the bedroom I grew up in.
I had a similar dream months before I can’t remember the location but my mothers was there and it needed same way. It is horrible to see this and feel it. I wake up and just hold my child.
Background info that maybe helpful, my brother died years ago from falling out of a truck and hitting his head on the street and same results as my dream.
Thank you for your help.
Kelly October 21, 2012 at 6:59 am [edit]
One more thing I just remembered that happens in dream. After my daughter hits her head my mom always says see there u go.
Bruce October 21, 2012 at 6:17 pm [edit]
Hi Kelly,
Firstly I am so terribly sorry that you lost your brother, and in such a tragic and horrible way. I am also sorry that your mother has not been comforting to you, but perhaps this dream offers a chance for profound healing for you and maybe even for you and your mom.
The meaning of this dream might be that your four-year-old symbolizes your own self as a young child. I don’t know if you were four when your brother died (I sense you were older for that tragedy), but I would imagine that some other trauma (perhaps of less obvious magnitude) did happen when you were four.
Something like parents splitting up, the death of a grandparent, a move or an injury might make sense. The key might be realizing that at four you were trying to grow up and be a bigger girl (thus the symbol of the chair) and when you did you “fell to the right” (in other words you were “right” or “correct” but mother did not cushion the blow).
Brains coming out of course relates to the trauma with your brother, but it is also symbolic for the loss of mind, for the sudden inability to think when thinking puts us face-to-face with a reality that is too much for us.
When trauma is overwhelming, we stop thinking, we stop being fully in our bodies, and we become immobilized.
Mom saying “there u go,” is also your symbolic inner mother/critic voice shaming you, telling you that if you try for anything (getting up on the chair, also symbolic of stepping up to higher consciousness, toward grown-up consciousness; perhaps also symbolic of striving to achieve something) you will lose, get hurt and mom will just be there to say “I told you so.”
The dream also now casts you as the mother of the child who is hurt, and this gives you the opportunity to realize that your mom might not be uncaring so much as she is still in shock and horror at the loss of her son. She may secretly blame herself for his death (which is not fair, but our minds can go there) and then she may feel like the best thing she can do for her beloved surviving children is to stay remote. The (however illogical) reasoning is that she thinks she causes the trouble, so “not touching” (i.e. being close, taking action) might seem like the way to protect you from her imagined bad luck or bad energy or something.
This is all so tragic. Your brother’s death cannot be undone, but your mom’s healing and self-forgiveness, and your own healing and forgiveness of your mom (and of yourself) might help the family heal.
At least it might help stop the nightmares, as your daughter is ok and our anxiety is often about imagining the past as the inevitable future. Being conscious about how you have been traumatized (maybe a little therapy focused on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) might really help free you up of the past and allow you to grow, love and feel safer in the reality of your current life.
Certainly Wishing You the Best
Kelly October 24, 2012 at 3:56 am [edit]
Thank you so much for your words and help. Blessings!
^ * * * ^
4 YR OLD OFF ROLLERCOASTER TRACKS
Melissa February 4, 2013 at 5:50 am [edit]
I had a dream last night that my daughter (4) was riding a rollercoaster and I was below watching her. She someone got out of the car and was walking around on the tracks. I kept yelling at her to sit down and wait for someone..to stop…sit down but she wasn’t listening. She then stepped off the track and fell from the top of the rollercoaster to the ground below. It was like slow motion in my dream and I started running to her but woke up. I could never really get back to sleep and it is still bothering me today. In my dream she wasn’t listening to me at all and sometimes we have that problem in real life…me telling her over and over to pick her toys up and such. It really bothered me…any ideas on what this could mean??
Bruce February 5, 2013 at 8:10 am [edit]
Hi Melissa,
As you may see through reading about the other dreams, one way to consider this dream would be as a reflection of different parts (i.e. images and feelings) of yourself. The rollercoaster could be a symbol of life with it’s ups and downs and scary turns that are supposed to be fun but can also scare us. When your child self is out of the car (the safe zone) and in danger of falling off the tracks (i.e. losing safe protection offered by the “rules,” which are like tracks, and they sometimes feel like they confine us, and sometimes in life the rules are not fair and kids know that and rebel against them; AND they want their way, like cookies and not broccoli, and then we have to be the “bad guy” and “keep them on track” and that is not too fun sometimes).
Falling from a great height is a common dream occurrence which has roots in neurology (the sensation of flying and falling is generated by the brain, somewhat randomly in sleep), but our narrative minds make our own dream-logic sense of the sensation. Thus a part of you feels like she is falling, but you are actually dreaming; to make sense of feeling like a part of you is falling when you are safe in bed, the dream-brain imagines you are watching a beloved part of you fall and you can’t stop it… because it is not actually happening.
Yet, you awaken to realize that you do struggle to set limits and sometimes feel angry and out of control, so the dream makes sense at that level too: and might help you bond with other parents, like myself, to feel less alone, less “bad” or out of control, and return to our gratitude that your treasured children are, thankfully in this instance, fine when we wake up.
The next step is somehow coming to trust that we parents are okay as well. For that I’m banking on E.M. Forester’s wisdom: only connect.
All Best Wishes
^ * * * ^
5 YR OLD FALLING BALCONY, ESCALATOR
Stephanie April 20, 2012 at 2:47 am [edit]
Very quickly, because it is late and being very tired…I’m going try to fall back to sleep….
My dream is, my mother, myself, and my 5 year old son are frantically walking in and out of mall stores trying to find clothing for my mother. I am very protective of my children physically, emotionally, and spiritually…anyhow, after the last store, we are walking out by the railing (we are on the second floor)…I look around by my sides and notice my son is not there! Only to look up and see him playing on the opposite side of the railing, he then jumps off and I am watching him fall while inside freaking out trying to register if this is real or not. He hits the floor feet first but screams out from pain. I run toward the closest escalator but my legs are so heavy and I’m moving so slow. He’s crying out for me holding his leg and I can see him but I cannot move fast and Im panicked. I woke up as I was making my way down the escalator to him. What do you think this could possibly mean? Thank you.
Bruce April 20, 2012 at 9:12 pm [edit]
Hi Stephanie,
One way to think about dreams is to interpret all the characters and places as symbols of our own deeper Selves. From this perspective you are trying to “clothe” (i.e. protect but also to find an identity for) your “mother self” while also trying to protect your child self. Your child self falls to a lower level (i.e. a lower or earlier level of consciousness, perhaps your own past or your own childhood) and hits the ground (i.e. reality) and experiences terrible pain.
You try to make your way safely down to this earlier consciousness and to the child you once were, and the dream shows how hard and painful it is do fully deal with your own past and with the frustration you feel at not being adequately protected by your own mother, and your unconscious resentment toward her for needing you to take emotional care of her.
You say that you are very protective of you children, which is natural, but perhaps you are also re-experiencing the pain of your past related to life when you were five.
While nothing is worse than bad things happening to our children, when we dream about this it often has more to do with ourselves than with our kids. If you were failing to protect your child in waking life the dream could be a warning, but if you already are very protective perhaps the dream is about how you felt out of control as a kid and now as a parent still feel out of control to fully protect your child. In this way the dream also just reminds you just how precious and how much you love your child. Sometimes we have a dream like this when our child hurts our feelings or irritates us; in such cases a dream may be a way that our unconscious negative feelings come into consciousness.
Another version of this is when a child is mad at his or her parent and then has a nightmare that something bad happens to that parent (these dreams worry us that we might cause harm with our bad thoughts, but they also challenge us to face that we’re not that powerful, and especially as kids we were very vulnerable and had no power over our parents or our situations—that is probably the core pain and the core emotion of the nightmare).
Of course dreams have many many possible meanings and these thoughts are mostly meant as encouragement for you to think creatively and open-heartedly about what the dream might ultimately be saying to you.
Certainly my wish is for the safety and well-being of you, your child and your mother. All Good Wishes
^ * * * ^
5YR OLD FALLING OFF CLIFF
Bonnie January 14, 2013 at 5:18 am [edit]
I had a dream my daughter was free-falling to the ground from some cliff & there was nothing I can do about it. She’s 5. I yelled out her name & reached my hand out to her but I knew she was gonna die-she was so far down & she was screaming & crying & looking up at me in terror. I couldn’t help her & I was right there & so I had to watch in complete agony. It was horror.
Bruce January 14, 2013 at 8:53 pm [edit]
Hi Bonnie,
If you read through the dreams left by other dreamers you will see that you are not alone in this apparently classic, albeit horrifying, dream.
A few ideas to contemplate here might include thinking of your child in your dream as a symbol of your own self as a child. Did you experience some sort of loss or change around age 5 that might have made you feel out of control?
Symbolically we might say that our identification with the child-self must die so our identity as full grown-ups can emerge. Five is a time of new autonomy and separation (i.e. kindergarten) and this could leave a mom feeling unconsciously abandoned, as if she were losing her baby to the march of time and development.
We experience such pains at every stage of growth, and it can be quite painful all along the way (not to mention launching them and moving ever forward into middle age and beyond).
A cliff is a sort of do or die symbol, the end of the road, of land, of a viable path. Falling could signify moving into a lower state of consciousness (i.e. facing what has hurt us in the past that we have not truly accepted or healed) and falling could signify coming down to earth, a popping of dreams of flight and fairytale lives in the face of parenting’s day-to-day blessings but also burdens.
As you might see from some other falling dreams, perhaps you might dream this again (or just use your imagination to picture it) and then somehow manage to catch your child, or fly and catch her. If you can pretend this, you can imagine this is your own child Self as much as your child now. You can tell her that you are sorry no one was able to catch her back when she was little, but now you are a mom yourself and you can catch her in your heart and mind and protect her and she can trust that no matter the past you are here with her, and for her, in the present.
I’m hoping this helps and that you have better dreams ahead.
^ * * * ^
5YR OLD “NOT MY CHILD” OFF CLIFF
Michelle April 12, 2013 at 5:13 am [edit]
What does it mean if I dreamt about my son but he wasn’t my son my real son is 18, graduating this year, the boy I dreamt about was like 5 years old and we walked in this store like Aaron’s rental the boy walks out I watch him tell him not to get close to the edge outside cause he could fall, I keep watching he walks to edge and then falls I freak out, start yelling, some man from store holds up a rope lowers it down I quickly, frantically go down to get him, I get to him he’s just not moving, I yell out ,”oh my god, please no!” And I keep saying it then I go to touch him and he wakes up like as if he was sleeping on his side then I was relieved, and kept thinking to myself it was the angels that saved him, and smiled and was a miracle..I woke up and just kept thinking to myself why in the world would I have a dream of a boy that didn’t look like my son? why in the world would a store be by a edge of a cliff? and he fell so far down and survived it? Now my child hood wasn’t the best of years I grew up with a family size of 5 and all of us were competitive in sports, and with each other , and we now are all in our 40s and we have lost both our parents that are no longer here anymore, we siblings do not talk anymore to at least two of the siblings, one who is I call Adolf hitler because she rules out the weak and gives no remorse or feels no love at all, and a brother who took and took from all of us, including dad and mom for so many years that he is hitlers right hand man, he also lies, and abuses us in ways that are just infathamable to think about, but they appear to others as the best people in the world no one would ever have a clue that they are just hatefull people! I am strict with my son, he doesn’t communicate with uncle and aunt, they are mental abusers and he’s witnessed them prey on him, only my baby brother and older sister talk and are in my sons life, it’s just so sad that after a number of years taking and taking from mom and dad and now they are not here anymore to take from, they are attacking each sibling in a manner that is unhealthy !
My dream just doesn’t make any sense it’s either my child hood memories, or my own worries about my son, I’m confused!! Help me out here….
Bruce April 12, 2013 at 11:55 am [edit]
Hi Michelle,
I’m happy to offer some ideas, but your heart must decide what makes the best sense for you.
The boy is is your son but is not your son could be interpreted as the “not me” part of yourself. The dream could show the need for you to connect with, love and revived this part of yourself, a forgotten, “fallen,” sad aspect who you fear is dead (i.e. your child-like exuberance and life spirit) but which is actually “sleeping” (i.e. in a state of non-consciousness).
Your actual son is 18, which is an age associated with launching, and thus for the parent a feeling of being left. We love our kids so much that it breaks our hearts to see them walk away, and yet we want them to be strong and have adventures so we feel right and loving when we support their launching and cry our tears and get through it.
The fact that the boy is five could be a hint that some part of you got particularly hurt around that age. The fact that you say that your family is “size of 5″ could also be a clue that the boy represents your family of origin, and the sense you have that it fell apart, split into evil Hitlers and takers and victims… a broken family.
Aaron’s is a rental store, apparently, suggesting that you don’t need to buy anything at this point (i.e. believe anything/”buy into”), but the place of consuming may be the place of disaster, at least in our consumer culture where money and taking and competing leaves many children playing at the edge of a cliff (fiscal, health care, education, pollution, love or lack thereof).
The man from the store, symbolically just might be the part of you that actually helps you by giving you enough rope (but not to hang yourself, to rescue your child self). Going up and down ropes, (along with talk of angels) made me think of Jacob and the ladder. Yet a rescuing mother angel, such as yourself getting to your child down a “rope,” could be a symbol of the umbilical cord—the original rope connecting you to your boy.
The “angel that saves him” is Love, courage, compassion and journeying down to the sad dark place to connect and revive.
Maybe this dream is your unconscious’s way of encouraging you to see that although things may feel dark and scary, you have the power and the help you need, all is far from lost and angels are giving you a chance at a new day.
As much as you resent your family, casting your sibling as Hitler may, psychologically, mean that you have given away your power along with your badness. You can’t forgive until you can, (and keep in mind that people who feel good about themselves are kind, thus bad behavior reveals pain, low-self esteem and feeling insecure, be it Hitler or sister; and such “dark angels” are beyond simple understanding); yet when you can forgive you will feel better, as your resentment hurts you more than it hurts those you resent.
While you can’t make people be nice, others really cannot stop you from being a loving person (they can hurt you, but you can come back and climb up the rope and be smarter and stronger for it).
My hope is that if you suffer, you do not suffer alone, and that love can be the cure for confusion. You know how much you love your kid (and even, it turns out, your “not me” kid). When we love all our kids as if they were our own we will find ourselves enjoying our lives much more thoroughly—and isn’t that the very opposite of Hitler’s ideas, to figure out who is bad and kill them?
^ * * * ^
5 YR OLD FALLS FROM 10 STOREY SCHOOL
Tanya Moore June 14, 2013 at 7:24 am [edit]
I had a dream that I was on my way to school in this bus. We was close to my school then the bus turned into a airplane and we flew to this big abandoned building. We was all the way on top and I kept seeing these kids playing on the edge climbing down the building. Amongst one of the kids was my 5yr old daughter. I seen her follow her 9yr old friend to the edge of this building. It was a ladder to climb down but u had to be a certain height to reach the ladder, my daughter was not. I watched her friend make it, then I called to my daughter telling her to stop before she tried. She looked over at me and lost her balance then she fell from the 10 story building. I quickly panicked and blamed myself for calling her. I wanted to jump but I couldnt so I ran down the steps fast, sliding and jumping the whole way. I gotto my daughter she was laying there as if she was dead. I grabbed her and held her then she woke up. I brought her into the building that was suppose to be my school and I found myself running from snakes with my daughter. Because someone had put them on the plane/bus. Can you please interpret this for me.
Bruce June 14, 2013 at 8:44 pm [edit]
Hi Tanya,
I’ll give you some ideas and you take it from there. My thoughts are that the school represents you across the past and the present. Your five year old Self is too small to be able to safely come down to earth on her own.
Perhaps something painful happened to you when you were five?
Your 9 year old self IS able to make it down the ladder, but the building/school is 10 stories high.
Again this makes me wonder about life at 10 for you. For example if your parents split up when you were five and you got a wicked step-dad when you were 10 this dream would make a lot of sense.
It’s as if you suffered between five and ten, but by ten you just couldn’t take it and some part of you died. But now you are a full grown mother and you can follow the hurt part of you down to earth, you can “hold her” which means you are able to think about her and mentally handle her pain, which she could not handle when she was young as she was “too small” to go down to earth (Mother) and also unable to go higher (i.e. to an adult level of understanding, or “up” to her higher mind and spirit).
Blaming yourself for your child self’s “fall” could be a symbol of shame, feeling that the ways in which you were hurt were deserved because you saw yourself as a “bad” kid. As a mom you know your kids are not bad and deserve protection (i.e. from the edge of the dangerous place).
Finally, the fact that it is a school might symbolize that you are needing new learning, and your writing to me and thinking about these themes (and your own story may be very different, but thinking about your truth, your love for your children and the need to heal and love yourself) is a sort of “school” of emotional and psychological learning.
I like to think we keep growing and learning (and getting better at loving and caring and protecting) as we mature. Maybe this dream also symbolizes the state of education in our culture? Maybe when enough of us realize that we actually do care about each other’s children we will build a better educational system and a more compassionate culture in which all our kids can trust that they are safe, treasured and deserve to reach their potential.
Sweet Dreams
^ * * * ^
4&5 YR OLDS FALLING BUT NOT DYING
Lu March 21, 2013 at 4:05 am [edit]
Hi, for the past 3 days i keep having lots of dreams about little boys around the age of 4 or 5 almost dieing. About 2 to 5 times a night. The first night it was of my son when he was that age. The last 2 nights its of little boys i don’t know. But for instance one was the little boy was on top of a building and tried to jump over to a watertower and fell to the ground. I rushed down to him and he was laying there hurt but totally fine. The latest one was I was driving in a hurry to get home and a boy was walking across the street, I served to miss him didn’t hit him and kept going. About a mile down the road I get a phone call from someone crying saying they cant find their son. They described the boy I almost hit. I go back and he is laying there hurt, but again fine. All of them end the same the little boy somehow either by him self, or with my help ends up laying on the ground hurt but fine. (not life threatening) when other rise I would think that they would be dead. Like the little boy who fell about 8 stories or the boy caught in the fire but found laying in the bathroom fine.
Bruce March 21, 2013 at 3:29 pm [edit]
Hi Lu,
My first question would be about if you had any sort of trauma, or witnessed trauma (accidents, car crashes, fires, etc.) when you were 4 or 5? Perhaps nothing so obvious but rather an emotional disaster around that age, such as parent divorce or death of a beloved grandparent?
Sometimes our children trigger us to re-experience events of the past as they take us through our own childhoods through their turning each different age.
Symbolically, I would see these dying children as a part of yourself. One way to think about it is that the child must die for the grown-up to be born, thus you may be facing a new stage of emotional or psychological development.
The symbols include “boys you do not know” which could be the masculine, and/or the child part of you that you are not yet conscious of. On top of a building could symbolize higher consciousness, but it could also symbolize going too high up as a defense against the bad feelings on the ground (symbolic of some sort of melancholy you may be experiencing, and an attempt to get up above them, rather than hug and love and understand them, which heals better than going too high, which could also, for some people, symbolize “getting high” or using drugs to deal.).
A water tower could symbolize a container, or ability to hold a lot of emotion—tears, symbol of mother, ability to wash away things, ability to refresh and re-hydrate… the stuff of life. Attempting to “jump over” it could symbolize trying to get over your feelings of sadness, or over your feelings about your mom, or about being a mom, or all of it.
You swerve to avoid a boy (i.e. try not to hurt, but also avoid dealing with) and you get a call that the kid is hurt nonetheless, which you have to see/find him, as the person who calls to say he’s missing is the part of you who denies/doesn’t see the part of you who is hurt.
A child falls 8 stories (could relate to a trauma at age 8, or again just going high to get away, this time from fire, which could symbolize your anger, and your attempts to keep the child self, and your own child, clear of your sadness, your anger, your ups and downs).
The kid is hurt but not dead, symbolizing perhaps that your exactly this. My hope is that being more aware of your own emotions and need for healing will help you get whatever love, compassion or healing you need. This would be an act of love for your actual child, and it is often our love for our children that can finally motivate us to seek whatever help and healing we need and reach our fuller potential for happiness.
Hope this helps
^ * * * ^
7 YR OLD, STAIRS AND BANNISTER (AND MOM’S MOM)
Tracey November 16, 2012 at 9:04 pm [edit]
Hi Bruce,
I had a dream last night that is really disturbing me, it was one of those dreams you can’t get out of your head.
I dreamt that I was yelling at my 7 yr old son, he was supposed to do “something” and he wasn’t listening. I have two boys, 7 and 17 but only the 7yr old was in the dream. So, I yell at my son and hit him, not HIT but spanked his arm and grabbed him and told him to get upstairs now and was yelling at him. My mother was with us walking up the stairs, they were metal stairs which the steps became more narrow as we walked up. I yelled at my son to hurry up or else, when all of the sudden he tripped. We were really high up and he fell thru the side of the banister, flipped and was hanging on by one arm, My mother and I screamed and as I went to grab his arm he lost his grip and plunged to the ground, we were like 30 stories up and my mother and I screamed NO and I woke up screaming.. It disturbs me even to write out the dream. What could it possibly mean? Its a horrible image in my mind.
Bruce November 17, 2012 at 7:41 am [edit]
Hi Tracey,
Perhaps we can think about this dream at both personal and collective levels. At the personal level it might be about how you are trying to integrate your child/male aspect that resists “growing up” (i.e. going up to a higher level of consciousness). Your own yelling and spanking behavior raises questions about the way you were parented, as it shows you feeling helpless to discipline your inner child aspect. Up the stair you go, along with your own inner mother. This could be a symbol of a step-by-step way to go up to higher consciousness and integrate the inner child and the inner mother.
The stairs get narrow, implying that we have to go single file on the journey, mother first, then you as your conscious self, then your child (lead by example, not coercion). Dreams are architected by the deep unconscious, and thus there tends to be a bit of a wish hidden in what happens. Not a wish for harm to our children, although that can be a part of our understanding—a safe way to express aggression and frustration (i.e. the hitting that didn’t actually happen because in a dream no one is physically hurt and it’s our own self we’re mostly dealing with).
The wish, however, might be that the women (mom and grandmother) are pushing the child higher (30 stories… are you nearing 30?) and the child doesn’t yearn to grow up, climb towers (often a male symbol of power, tower building and climbing) but rather we see a violent and scary movement back to earth—the Great Mother.
Perhaps if you meditate on compassion and hugs for your own inner kid, whoever you were at 7, and let her be in touch with nature at the earthy level, it will give you better dreams.
At the collective level, all these dreams of children being hurt makes me wonder if we might heed the warnings of our own parent souls—too much climbing and controlling and striving and we miss the eternal wisdom of children and child-mind.
As parents we must socialize our children, but we have been too much about climbing and competing, not enough about community and connecting. As our world possibly trends toward more connection (evidenced by your ability to connect with me around this dream for example) we have a chance for a re-think on what we value. If we all come a bit more down to earth we might learn that our children lead us in a good direction if we allow them—the importance of play, of fairness, of tenderness, of compassion and trust.
Maybe all us grown-ups have been hurt, and if we realize we are not so alone, or inadequate (i.e. “bad parents”) as we fear, we might be able to support each other to hang out, enjoy, learn something new.
I am increasingly humbled by confusion and by the sadness and fear that comes from loving and deeply attaching. The fact that we dread losing our children also speaks to how they are our greatest treasure, how they teach us to love beyond ourselves and become aware that there is nothing to get that we don’t already have.
Then the challenge is how to tolerate the march of time and loss, how to find something eternal and soothing in the face of eventual death in even the best-case scenario. Maybe our deep wish is to know we are safe and loved, and to be taught by our ancestors how to make our way slowly and safely up the stairs when it is time.
Or maybe the child in us wishes there will be a new way, something we do not yet grasp, in which neither children, parents nor grandparents will have to suffer so much in this world.
I have no clue, but maybe the kids, if we treat them well enough, will come up with a better way to understand life as we think we have understood it.
^ * * * ^
* 8 YR OLD FALLING OFF BRIDGE (PARENTS AND PASSAGES)/LOSS OF PARENT
Rebecca August 5, 2012 at 11:54 pm [edit]
Hi, trying to work out my dream I found this page. My dreams don’t normally affect me but this dream disturbed me and woke me feeling deeply upset.
From the bits I can remember I am in the car with my parents. They are using my car for some reason and not my own. They do not like my radio Chanel and change it for their own choice. The next thing were all out of the car and walking and come to a very steep king of bridge. Too steep to climb so I see a way round the side is a path. As we walk round we come to like a little bridge that I walk across but it only has a wall on one side the other I can see miles down below me. It startles me and I tell my mother to keep to the right so she doesn’t fall. Once we’re all across safely I remember my 8year old daughter is behind us. As I look back to find and warn her she is on the bringe and my calling distracts her and I watch and scream as I watch her fall and fall to the ground below. I begin to race down a stairway to get to her but woke up before I reached her. I feel very sad wondering what this could mean.
In my real life I am 5 days away from moving myself and children away from our friends and family to go and live closer to my partner that lives 90 miles away where we will start a fresh knowing no one. Please help me understand my dream. I know nothing will happen to my daughter but the thought of the dream makes me cry!
Thanks
Becky
Bruce August 6, 2012 at 11:45 am [edit]
Hi Rebecca,
While this is clearly a disturbing dream, my first instinct is to encourage you to notice the guiding wisdom of your own deep Self (which created the dream and brought it into your conscious awareness).
This dream shows a map of where you are in your life right now, and it offers understanding and a way forward. Let’s take the tack of seeing all the parts in this dream a symbols of parts of yourself (this helps you realize your actual child is safe and your actual parents are no longer running your life).
Your symbolic parents are “using” your car (a symbol of your conscious self or sense of identity). This suggests that you may have felt like your parents, unwittingly, used you to contain their feelings and needs rather than the other way around. Failing to get accurate understanding as a child (i.e. parents listening to their music and not yours, their own thoughts and feelings and not your thoughts and feelings) left you feeling intruded upon, confused and unsafe emotionally.
The bridge is a symbol of a high path linking two separate bodies of land, or of a way to link and traverse two different states of consciousness (dependent/independent; safe/unsafe; connected/lonely) or two stages of development (i.e. child/grown-up; one living with parents/one being a parent). Just as we have unconscious slips of the tongue when we talk, we have them when we type. Interestingly you write of a high “King” of bridge, when you meant to say “Kind” of bridge.
Not to make too much of it (sometimes a bridge is just a bridge), you are trying to be kind to your child, and also to yourself (i.e to be with your partner) and thus you are seeking a “King” bridge that can govern and unite all your different needs, feelings and thoughts.
Jung said that God is like an island with all religions being different religions leading to that same island. For those of us who find religion to be a problematic bridge, we have to swim for it, or build a boat and sail it alone… but maybe your unconscious reveals yet another path: the king bridge—the path above all the lesser ones, something precarious but possible.
On this bridge of yours we have a wall to the left (the left typically suggests the intuitive, but has often in history been associated with both the feminine and the sinister, which literally means “left leaning.”). The “right” could mean the very idea that there is a “right” way that is right for everyone—this side of things has no wall and can lead to falling to a lower level of consciousness and thus not making it to the yearned-for destination of compassion, understanding, individuality at the same time as community—to a place of good feelings that might truly last and not simply slip away and leave us feeling empty and lonely.
The scary part comes when your child falls. This is interesting in that the unconscious sends the child part of you back down to earth (a symbol of mother… so it’s a good time to give your mom a hug, if she’s still alive, and forgive her for whatever limitations caused you to feel like you fell off a bridge in your childhood, most likely when you were around 8 years old).
On the other hand, kids often dream of falling when they are having growth spurts (perhaps wanting to “fly” but also wanting to stay safe in baby-like dependency). Maybe the inner child can be resurrected in your imagination (a bit like Wile E. Coyote with endless disasters that never kill that wise-fool Trickster, although he never quite gets that Roadrunning bird either… for She is to be found on the other side of the king bridge in the realization that she is also our own Self, just as our inner Mother, Father, Lover, Child, Villain and Car might be).
Jung also said that the things that we cannot be conscious of are those which materialize and meet us as our fate. Thus being conscious of your fear of your child getting hurt allows you to be sure to protect her, hold her hand across this bridge, play her music on the radio when you drive those 90 miles, read her stories and tuck her in when she is safely on the other side of this transition and know that you are holding her hurt, and your own, and your parents all in the lovely vessel of your own mind, or psyche, or soul.
Now that you have a “stairway” to race down to your child you have a path to go to child-consciousness and up which you can return. Think of Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven,” only in reverse… but if you can go down, you can go back up and take your child self with you. That’s akin to crossing the bridge to higher consciousness and the place of good feelings that truly last.
Don’t look to my words, however, look to your own dream symbols. As Rumi says, “out beyond right and wrong there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
Perhaps that “field” is right here and now and all bridges lead to it, if only we open our eyes softly enough to see it. I’m still working on it myself.
Meanwhile, wishing you sweet dreams and sweet waking life too.
Rebecca August 6, 2012 at 3:14 pm [edit]
Thank you so much that has Really helped. My mother is in hospital right now and I’ll miss her lots and her finally ” letting me go” is very true.
I’m very glad I found your site!
Thank you!!!
Bruce August 6, 2012 at 10:38 pm [edit]
Hi Rebecca,
I’m so very sorry about your mother, but at least your dream offers hope for true love across the awesome bridge between this life (and state of consciousness) and whatever may be on the other side of it—and the importance of loving of our children (and each other) in the here and now. Thanks for taking the time to let me know what you are facing. Wishing you, your mom, your girl and all those you love compassion and understanding during all dark and difficult crossings, and the sharing of that compassion and understanding with others whenever you are able.
^ * * * ^
8, 10, 11 YR OLD BACK TO SCHOOL MOM; KIDS ON BALCONY; THEN PULLING MAIL…
Juanita Sanchez November 12, 2012 at 7:29 am [edit]
I woke up morning seriously disturbed from my dream. I dream a lot! Sometimes i wonder if i get real sleep. Sometimes I’ll have things in my dreams that i think i have in real life and until i remember that i only had them in the dream, I’ll even look for things. It’s quite weird.
I’ve never written to anyone about a dream, so maybe you can help me. In my dream, i stated out as a student in my 5th graders class. Doing work, etc. i remember the teacher falling down- she slipped on some papers, complained about people picking up after themselves (i often complain about the same to my 3 kids), but she was fine. In another part of my same dream, i from a distance, a pretty big distance- saw all 3 of my little kids (all under 11) and one of their friends, playing in a apartment or hotel balcony. Climbing it, practicing hand-stands on the railing. I was screaming to stop, not to climb, to get back but they wouldn’t listen! I watched as one by one they jumped off. I was feeling scared and panicky. I saw them all hit the ground and liquid shatter. I was soooo scared!! I ran over and saw my 4 year old Son, dead. His eyes were open. I found my 10 year old, she stood up and seemed okay. I then saw my 8 year old and she was on a bench, kinda convulsing. I heard a sound in real life that woke me up. I woke up disturbed, with headache and unable to fall back asleep. The friend that was with them and also jumped, i didn’t see her at the bottom..
I’d also love if you could shed some light on a recurrent dream i have. I’ve had the similar dream for years!! I’m at my old home. I lived there when i was about 12 until i was about 17. I always see through my own eyes and i can see my arms and hands but nothing else on my body. I think i can only see straight ahead- not to the sides. I’m always trying to get our tricky mailbox open just like i used to have to because we didn’t have the key. I’m always pulling mail after mail pieces out. Envelope after envelope and it feels good. I never see who the pieces are for but it feels good. I always see the front door when I’m getting ready to go back in, and i step onto the brown carpet and see the inside staircase, but that’s really it. I don’t think i even get to open the mail that I’m holding and so excited about! I have this dream at least two to three times year and it’s mostly always the same. The vivid front door, mailbox and mail- buti do think the mail pieces itself do change from dream to dream.
Thank you so much for your help!!
Juanita
Bruce November 12, 2012 at 10:53 am [edit]
Hi Juanita,
If you read through some of the other comments above you will find many dreams in which children fall to various stages of death or injury.
Perhaps your dream suggests that new learning is in order, that is often the case when we find ourselves back in school in a dream. The “teacher” (the know-it-all part of our selves) slips, but is okay; this is the inner smart one falling down to the level of the kids, for whom papers are not so easy, especially at ten when their brains are changing (see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2009/07/31/ten-year-olds-and-their-changing-brains/)
Then you see your kids “from a distance” which is like getting perspective on them, and on parenting them, but also in relating to the kid parts of yourself.
The balcony could represent higher consciousness, where your kid aspect can balance and do cool things, but the parent self panics and then the magic breaks and they fall, like Humpty Dumpty, back to sad grown-up reality.
Here we have disaster for your four-year-old self, suggesting some sort of trauma or loss when you were four, but maybe hinting at how parenting a boy is challenging and makes you so mad your unconscious does him some harm… but it’s cartoon harm and he’s fine when you wake up. You just need deeper understanding and perspective, love and compassion, patience and support (that’s easy, right? Our society is so filled with this for moms… well, we can all dream of that together…)
The boys dies, but his “eyes are open” this could mean that really seeing what has hurt you is very shocking and difficult. The ten year old is okay, and that is the part of you who began to think about things and be able to have a little mastery and control (but the younger kid was left behind in your psyche and must be rescued into eyes-wide loving consciousness now).
The 8 year old is key: this is in between the wound at 4 and the sealing of it away at 10. To convulse is to naturally heal from great trauma and shock (see the work of Peter Levine for help with this: http://www.traumahealing.com/somatic-experiencing/peter-levine.html).
Perhaps you are on the cusp of organically arising healing? Perhaps it would be safe to attend to these wounded kids within you, using imagination and the natural feelings and sensations of your body to simply not block the healing from arising. If there is trauma in your past, it might be good to talk with a professional about it, but also to shake it out, dance it out, yoga it out… whatever works for you.
The recurring dream there is the suggestion of being frozen in time. Symbolically it suggests a trauma related to receiving some sort of shocking news, and the wish to get some sort of good news (i.e. that it was all a dream?).
When you go back inside you see the staircase, which might be a symbol of how you can get to a higher consciousness without flying off balconies, step by step as we do in parenting.
The recurring dream also suggests a wish to receive letters, to be written to, cared about, connected with, rescued, loved, understood… all the things that all of us want and need if we’ve been hurt and have not yet managed to re-integrate body, mind and spirit.
Hope these ideas spark your own creativity, imagination and joy in healing and loving your kids and your life
Juanita Sanchez November 12, 2012 at 12:17 pm [edit]
Thank you SOOoooo soooo so much Bruce!! I will read this and re read this a million times until I get it. I thought this was a nightmare but it’s so much more. I had a horrendous childhood (at least it felt that way to me). I’m dealing with a lot now as a young adult. I’m actually seeing someone about it finally, and I really appreciate the insight. Brought tears to my eyes!! :)
Sincerely,
Juanita
^ * * * ^
9 YR OLD FALLS WITH FAKE DEER
JDS April 29, 2013 at 12:43 am [edit]
I had this dream last night I don’t really remember the first part,but me and my friend and my 9 year old daughter are at a camp ground my friend gets my attention and points to my daughter who is on the back of a fake deer and the ground the deer is on is flimsy and it caved in and she fell! I ran and jumped in the hole after her unconcerned about my death thinking oh well if she dies I don’t want to live! I land on a wood pile feet first unharmed and my daughter is face down on the wood pile. I turn her over and she has bark in her eyes ad her eyes are rolling in the back of her head. I was thankful she was alive but very worried if she was gonna be blind I was holding her trying to rub the wood out of her eyes and when I couldn’t I think I patted her hair to console! Please help this had me feeling very anxious!
Bruce April 29, 2013 at 8:39 am [edit]
HI JDS,
As I’ve tried to make clear in other comments, I cannot “know” what this dream means. If we deal with the fact that you had it, it disturbed you enough to search the web about it, and my interest in dreams and in helping parents brings us together to consider possible meanings—and more importantly, how to help you feel safe, good and be the best parent you can be to your girl—maybe we’ll be on the right track.
The dream clearly shows that your love for your child is your very top priority, and it makes you brave (enough to jump into holes, etc.—to prefer your own death to that of your child). In loving anyone as much, or more, than we love ourselves we are in the realm of transcendant love. This can be “co-dependent” and maladaptive, or it can be noble and feel right for us.
If we start with rational science, we would say your brain just fired off a bunch of nonsense and your story-telling mind, part of what makes you human, spun it into a fabulous, albeit disturbing, tale. In this perspective, normal feelings of falling (one of the most common dream experiences) show up here… falling in a hole (this might be part of why we so easily relate to Alices improbable drop into the rabbit hole—as it isn’t “real” and yet it seems oddly familiar). The “hole” may also feel like falling into sadness with no one to catch us (this might be the feeling of the child or of the overwhelmed parent).
The fact that you turn the symbols of falling and seeing, or not seeing, into this story then begs the more poetic question: what do deer, stumps, bark, etc. mean to YOU? Here is where you must be creative yourself.
Not knowing you, I am then forced to either personally associate to these symbols, or try and draw on the most common meaning of these symbols in our shared culture.
For example, a deer could also be a pun on “dear.” I could be way off on this, but it crossed my mind that you are camping with a “friend,” and you are thus in the forest without your girl’s father. The deer/dear could symbolize father. Since father is no overt part of this dream, it makes me wonder if he is no real part of your life (i.e. if you are a single mom). If your girl is both your daughter, but also symbolically your own self at that age, maybe you as parent feel that bio-dad is a “fake,” that which is not real and crumbles when playtime (camping) is over and reality (paying bills, driving to school, dentist, cooking and cleaning, etc.) sets in. Thus daddy dearest is on flimsy ground.
Now before we go hating on hubby (or lack thereof) we might need a nod to wherever “father” sits in your own mind and early development… was he flimsy, fake, abandoning? And THEN… we are well-served to consider these symbols as “inner father” (weak/strong), “inner child” (idealized, up on a deer/falling into the depths of despair)., etc.
The art here would be to integrate all these parts of Self into one coherent story, and thus one coherent human (with good and bad qualities). From there we can work constructively with other humans to do well by ourselves and our children.
You land on a stump. Have you read “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss. Maybe YOU, as mom, speak for the trees, for the spirit of vegetation. Tree spirits are the very taproot of primitive superstitions in our ancient past, and the basis for religion after that (christ dies nailed to wood, thus he may be God or he may be symbol of the vegetation god that dies and is reborn. I don’t wish to offend religious people, only to help a mom in a dark place where there is only daughter in the woodpile (which could be symbol for that which is wood meant for the fire, the symbol of sacrifice of children… which was actually done routinely throughout our human past—a true nightmare that modern religion, for all its faults and foibles, helped abolish).
Yet another meaning for “stump” (beyond a “stump speech”) is to be stumped or puzzled by a riddle. I offer ideas, but ultimately we must be stumped by our own lack of certainty about ultimate Truth. What we know in our bones is we love our children.
“Bark” in the eyes also seems like a potential pun: bark protects the tree like skin protects us. If she has bark for eyes she is becoming the tree, which is a symbol of soul. In other words you meet your own soul in the depths of yourself and wish to either die with her or bring her up into life as you may mortally live it with the rest of us.
“Bark” is also what the dog says (a warning, a threat). Perhaps this bark is better, not worse, than the bite of seeing clearly. To see that YOU have fallen into anger, despair, fear… and then actually wake up grateful that your baby is okay, creates the possibility to jump from mythic and religious ideas to scientific—as magic that actually works is called science. And there is no reason to think that science won’t bring us to the God of what is—an amazing grace once blinded by bark (back when we were trees) evolving into creatures with eyes (now we see).
And the attitude of science is to test things and pay close attention to the result.
My hypothesis: you are angry and hurt by men and have a right to feel so.
My hypothesis: if you work toward forgiveness of those who have hurt you, you may rub the bark (the angry snarl) out of your own eternal child eyes and see your power, your beauty, your grace and find that you are not alone, that real deer and real trees really exist and so does your real daughter.
Console yourself with all the consciousness you can bring, thank your nightmare as a teacher, and instead of pulling wool over each other’s eyes (and the golden fleece is another ancient symbol of kingly power nailed to an ancient tree, but that’s another story) we remove the bark (wasn’t it Jesus who said before removing the splinter from your neighbor’s eye remove the plank from your own?) and see the forest (which we’ve all but cut down entirely in “real life”) for the trees.
In the end, I hope these ideas are of help to you, and I’ll sign off admitting that although I may be as stumped as before I met you, I truly wish you and your daughter well and in doing my best I encourage you to do the same, and maybe that’s more important than being “right” anyway.
JDS April 29, 2013 at 5:15 pm [edit]
Thank you, luckily my husband is a big part of our life! However, it your input did help a lot! Thank you for taking the time to respond!
Bruce April 29, 2013 at 5:23 pm [edit]
And thanks for the feedback—we can guess, but not know, and caring means listening and correcting based on what we get. I’m glad to hear you are blessed with a loving husband, so many moms are going it alone these days.
In chatting about your dream my wife mentioned a book she’s reading, and loving: “State of Wonder” by Ann Patchett (http://www.amazon.com/State-Wonder-Novel-Ann-Patchett/dp/006204981X)
Apparently it has much to say about the mythic potential of trees and bark… maybe it will bring good dreams :)
^ * * * ^
FALLING OFF CLIFF (SPIRITUAL JOURNEY)
Roxanne October 1, 2012 at 9:14 am [edit]
HI
I Had an extremely disturbing dream of my son. Since I have had this dream I feel un easy and am un able to shake it.
My husband and I wre in a parking lot in broad daylight standing around , when suddenly my dream changed. It was dark and a family member came driving past in the car towing a bike with his child on the bike. He swerved and skidded and the next thing I knew the family member his son,my husband,my son and I were all hanging off the side of this cliff. My son could not hold on and suddenly let go. I heard him hit the bottom and give out a cry. I looked down and said I need to let go and see if I can make it to him as maybe he was still alive. The family member shrugged his shoulders as if to say hey I dont care. and that is when I woke up. I have been battling to get the thought of my sons cry and hitting the bottom out of my head for days now. My stomache turns each time I feel it, I feel very emotional about it as well.
Thank you.
Bruce October 1, 2012 at 4:29 pm [edit]
Hi Roxanne,
I notice how everything is fine, and then suddenly dark and scary. This makes me wonder about how your childhood might have felt to you. Being pulled on a bike is like a childhood out of control, and then off a cliff says a whole family in danger, but the child part of you falls, is not protected—that child part of you is crying out in your dream for you to become conscious about it, which is how you can heal the impact of the past.
Perhaps, once upon a time, it was you who couldn’t “hold on” and now you are trying to give emotional security to your own kids when you might not have benefited from as good parenting as you are now providing.
The key is to realize that your children are not in danger of falling off cliffs or being pulled around on bikes—and in fact the “bad guy” who shrugs “Hey I dont care” is also a part of our own self, in psychological terms.
Of course real hurt helps make these Shadow figures menacing, but love and the light of consciousness will tend to transform the suffering (and stop the cycle as it ripples through our families until compassion and love might bring it to a close).
Imagine talking to this Shadow figure, suggesting that you know they say they don’t care, so they must have felt like no one cared about them. Now you can do the caring, about those who have hurt you and those you want to protect.
We don’t need to be terribly powerful to do this, more like conscious and perhaps lovingly connected with community, with those who actually care (as you can’t stop people from caring about children, as it’s a private feeling).
Hope this helps
Roxanne October 1, 2012 at 11:34 pm [edit]
Hi Bruce
Thank you very much for replying.
This has helped me tremendously.
I am on a spiritual journey at the moment where I am trying to discover myself and what my purpose in life is.
The help you have given me is greatly appreciated and its great to know that there are people out there as yourself who are willing to help.
Hope you have an amazing day.
Regards
Roxanne
Bruce October 2, 2012 at 2:35 pm [edit]
And thanks so much for your kind words back, Roxanne—I hope your days, and your spiritual journey, will prove amazing too.
Warmest Regards, Bruce
^ * * * ^
44 YR OLD GROWN SON FALLS IN VOLCANO
Denise September 5, 2012 at 8:41 am [edit]
I had a dream my son who is 44 was inside what looked like a volcano but the inside top part there was snow all around the inside and he fell I screamed but he had stopped falling.He was crying out to me to save him and the ground underneath me was fragile kept breaking off.He suddenly was in front of me and i reached down and pulled him to safety we fell back hugging each other ,crying and saying I love you to each other while tears streamed down our faces.When woke up my heart was racing and I was crying.He recently moved to a big city that has a lot of shootings and he goes to work at night and I had been thinking and worrying about him and my grandaughter living there.
Bruce September 5, 2012 at 10:31 am [edit]
Hi Denise,
Firstly, I must say that your dream moved me to feel tears as I read it—and while it inspires me to know how we never stop loving our children, it also moves me to suggest that perhaps somehow our own parents, ancestors or other spirits may still and eternally be loving us and catching us as we fall too.
As for interpreting this dream (and I think it is a big dream, meaning it has both personal and collective implications) let’s start with your own personal psyche.
From this perspective your son would symbolize your inner child, even if he is now 44 he’ll always be your “baby.” Thus your baby is in a precarious place: a volcano is hot (i.e. a place of new emerging earth or consciousness, but also a classically hellish symbol of torment) and could symbolize your own inner passionate emotions. AND the inside of this volcano has snow, which might symbolize coldness (the part of you that might be frozen with fear, the part of you that might feel left out in the cold as your baby moves away, but also the part of you that can be cool-headed and rational). Also, as with real volcanoes such as Mt. Shasta (which I recently drove by) snow does gather on the top and thus the mountain as symbol of higher consciousness, the cooling down of our initial explosions into being, might be a symbol of your baby rising to a place of higher spirituality.
Very importantly you find yourself hugging your boy and being together in loving emotions. The dream may symbolize your wish for this, the wish to hold him safe and to know that you’re always connected and you can always protect him from danger.
Know that as your inner child becomes safe in your mature consciousness you have achieved a lot, and that you can share that strong love with the children, and grandchildren, as this is what time it is.
And that brings us to the bigger resonance of the dream. Our children represent all of us, and our fears and our cities with crime and poverty is the part of us that needs compassion and hugs and healing and understanding—the transcending of shame and isolation and the coming together of community, family, country and world.
The politicians are not going to do this, the parents and grandparents are already doing this. You are doing this. We have fear and we have hurt and we have loneliness, but we also have courage, and healing and love.
Here’s to the very best for your son, your granddaughter and all our collective children (while being held lovingly in the arms of our spirit ancestors).
Warmest Regards
<<<<>>>>
{ 121 comments… read them below or add one }
I have nightmares all the time. Some get really bad where my heart will start raising. Most of my nightmares involves my kids. I have 5 kids that range from 4 to 12 years old. My recent nightmare was of my 7 year old son. We were in a hotel room and the kids kept going near the windows and opening them where there would only be a screen in the window. I told my kids to stay away from the window. But my 7 year old kept pushing on the window knowing he is not suppose to. I try to grab him before the screen gives way but I am not fast enough. He falls about 30 stories and I am afraid to look out the window to see him. I woke up with a racing heart and a Charlie horse in my right calf. I have had nightmares of getting shot and killed. I have had nightmares of bad things happening to my kids and in every nightmare there is nothing I can do to stop it my kids from getting hurt. I am a diabetic with uncontrolled sugars taking Lantus insulin. Taking same insulin for more than 2 years. I don’t know if this has anything to do with the nightmares. In nightmares involving my kids I wake up really upset, crying and lately with a racing heart. I have felt some abnormalities with my heart lately.
Hi Jamie,
I am sorry for your struggles and wanted to redirect you to what I wrote in the main post on nightmares about kids:
Please Note that I will no longer be able to personally interpret dreams as they arrive, however I have organized the many dreams below into a more searchable structure. Please click over to this Guide to Bad Dreams About Our Children: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/a-guide-to-bad-dreams-about-our-children/
from there you can search by category, and that will lead you to threads of dreams organized by age of children and hopefully you will find some similar dreams and some ways of thinking about your own dream that will be helpful to you.
All Best Wishes & Sweet Dreams
I had a dream about my son falling off my building from top floor and again had the same dream but the place was different. What could be reason for same kinf of dream twice?
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
As for repeating, perhaps you don’t tend to listen the first time when you are offered information?
The “top floor” could be grandiosity and the “falling” could be about the need of your child self to come down to earth.
Perhaps a difficult childhood yourself?
I wish you luck, but your very haste to just leave your dream and not actually read any of the words written above suggest you might learn from the dreams of others—learn that we’re not so alone as we fear, that we need not climb so high as we think, and will not be harmed from falling (maybe you will learn to fly in your dreams afterall, and walk on the ground in your waking hours).
Sweet Dreams
Hi, just wondering if you can help me. I keep have the same dream night after night and Im struggling to sleep :( me my son and my daughter are in a car accident. We go to hospital my 6 yr old daughter is in a bad way in a coma. Me and my 2yr son are sat in a@e were both fine. He’s playing outside while I sit at the nurses station. All of a sudden he slides between the wall and glass and falls 200ft down. I’m screaming and the doctors screaming to get help. All I can see is his body sll mangled with blood everywhere. Even thu I’m still sat in a@e. it’s like Ivan see thrugh walls. Please help thankyou.
Hi Leanne,
Not sure if you read the post above, but it says:
[Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
Please take some time to read some of the dreams and you will get the general idea of how to think about the parts of your dream.
One hint: perhaps something happened in your life when you were 2 years old, something that felt like falling (i.e. depression, loss of someone important, illness or injury… something where you felt seen but unable to be helped?)
Certainly wishing you healing and better sleep ahead
My boyfriend had a dream last night of our son falling off a bed and staying unconcious. This is all he remembers. Any idea why he would dream this?
HI Inbubs,
Please follow my lead as written above:
[Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
If you read some of the other dreams about falling you will certainly get the gist of what I would suggest you consider.
Hint: the boy in the dream could represent the part of your boyfriend that got hurt or depressed (“fell”) and has still not come to terms with the hurt that he experienced when he was your son’s age.
Please read some of the other dreams for deeper insight and to discover how much company you have in dreams like this.
Sweet Dreams
Hello,
Just this afternoon I had a dream about being in this house .It was a house that was apparently designed by some professionals on TV but it seemed very scary and unsafe to me. There was an entire floor that was made up of floating (hanging) pallets with large spaces and no railings. I suddenly found myself down on the bottom floor and I looked up and my daughter was being pulled by her feet from some unseen force from her basinet on that top floor where she was apparently napping. Then she fell. She fell all the way down from that floor and hit the bottom floor. I ran trying to catch her and screaming. I didn’t get to her in time to catch her, she hit the floor and blood instantly started pouring from her mouth. She was still crying and I was screaming to my dad who seemed to be unaware of what had just happened, to call 911. I was trying to comfort her and keep her still and make sure that she was still alive. What does this mean?????? It was horrible!
Hi Mikel,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
Sorry I can’t keep up with the demand, but if you read through the dreams of others you will likely get insights into your dream.
All Best Wishes
hello…I have very frequent dreams of my youngest daughter falling. Most of the time in the dream she’s falling off my bed and I will jump out of bed to catch her and realize that I was only dreaming. Once I dreamt that she was falling through the slots on her crib and once again I jumped up to go run and save her. I have had these dreams since she was born. She is now 15 months. She has never even napped on my bed. The only thing I can pin point to the stress I’m under regarding her is the fact that she’s now 15 months old and still not standing, but that wouldn’t explain why they started when she was a newborn. Any advice would be so helpful. I don’t want to jump out of sleep anymore to save my “falling” daughter. Thank you for your time and expertise!
Hi Candace,
as I noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
Nevertheless, a hint: The baby in the dream may represent your own child self, and thus the feeling of falling could hint at some sort of feeling of being dropped, at least emotionally, when you were an infant. Think about losses in the family, abandonment, illnesses or other struggles that might have had impact on you. Another symbolic interpretation could be a way of conceptualizing depression (falling/sorrow), and yet another could be that the brain simply experiences floating sensations which the mind interprets as someone falling.
Since she’s never actually falling in real life perhaps the next time she is falling you can realize you’re dreaming. If you know it’s a dream then you can teach your baby self that she can fly, or any fantastical version of how you’d like to change and transform the nightmare into transcendence, or at least liberation from terror of loss.
Do read through other dreams for further insights.
Wishing you sweet dreams
Im having a recurring dream about my step daughter we r walking over a wooden bridge and we both fall and she climbs up but I keep falling and after she realizes im not climbing back up she lets go she is 5…plz help
Hi Jon,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
Nevertheless, a couple of hints might be a place to start… since it is recurring perhaps your deeper Self is trying to help you become conscious of something that your conscious or ego-self is resisting?
A “bridge” is potentially a symbol of connection (two places, two people), and also of crossing (childhood to adulthood, single to married, no kids to having kids).
“Wooden” implies organic material, trees could connect with growth, perhaps also with biblical tree symbolism (thus knowledge and life). This could especially be resonant since you both “fall” (and human descent from innocence is called “the fall” in biblical mythology).
The child climbs up (is able to get to “higher consciousness”) but you “keep falling” Maybe this symbolizes your fear that your pain, your insecurities (that we all have) are somehow not resolved, or forgiven or something like that.
The child “realizes” that you can’t do it on your own, she “lets go” (which is lovely, she might symbolize the sacred and loved part of you, that child who would rather fall than see her parent, even her “step-parent” fall all alone).
It sounds to me like you love your step-daughter but you yourself are sad and afraid that you will let down your kid when what you really want is to cross with her on that bridge to love that lasts and can be trusted.
I would venture to say that it is a relief to know that it is “just a dream,” and that both you and your child are safe. The dream says that you must let go, and that your “child self” will heal just fine when you realize that you are already safe. Sort of like “Wizard of Oz” where the big reveal is that Dorothy had what she needed all along and that there is no place like home: you have what you need and you are already home. Trust that, trust the wisdom of your own dream, maybe you will realize that you and your girl can fly in your dreams, and that you can enjoy the bridge of life when you are awake.
Or something like that :) Only you can know what your own dream means.
Certainly wishing you sweet dreams
my mother dreamed thrice about my 21 year old brother falling.in first two dreams he is falling from a tree and in the last one he is falling from a hill.these dreams have really affected her and i cant find anything on internet about this.in first dream he is young in later dreams he is of same age he is now.
Dream 1 —we are at a temple and he falls from a peepal tree on near the statues of deities.
dream 2 we are in a mango orchard he falls from a tree
dream 3 he falls from a hill into a deep valley
please help us to find the meaning of these dreams this is giving my mother sleepless nights
Hi Aakriti,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
Still, a few hints to help your mother out…
At a personal level this dream could be about your mom trying to come to terms with her little boy growing up and leaving her to have his own life. This can be very hard for parents and so your mom needs love and compassion no matter what.
I’m wondering if this is an older or younger brother, as it seems your role is to help your mom, and this may make it hard for you to go off and follow your own path, but that’s not your mothers dream, so we’ll stick with that.
Sometimes dreams represent wishes, so in the first two dreams your mom wishes that her son is young again and therefore he’s not able to “fly away” from her. In fact, when he separates from the tree (symbol of ancestors, Father, wisdom, life, etc.) he just falls right to earth (symbol of Mother). This would make sense in that your mom wants her baby to come back to her.
In the first dream it is a Peepal tree, which is basically the Bodhi tree, symbol of enlightenment or true awakening. This makes sense as our children, and certainly your mom would agree about her own children, are like gifts from God, and thus fall to us parents like fruit from the sacred tree of Life.
It is interesting that your brother “falls” from the tree, because this could symbolize the Western sense of The Fall as a symbol of original sin (and your mom may feel like her own child aspect has somehow done something wrong; this is the basis of human minds which are nervous and guilty, the source of our suffering). The Bohdi tree reference could be a hint from your mom’s unconscious that it’s time to, metaphorically, sit under the Bodhi tree and become free, as the Buddha learned non-attachment there, and as a parent it is very, very hard to become non-attached. In fact, I’m not a fan of separation, and the deeper teachings of the Buddha suggest that there is no separation—that separation is only in our limited minds.
In this sense what “falls from the tree” is not the beloved child, but your mom’s old way of thinking, one bound by birth and death, attachment and loss. I’m not saying I’ve come near to such enlightened thinking, but maybe your mom can attain it and show us how it’s done :)
The next dream amplifies the first, equating her son with a mango, and this is obvious as he is sweet to her and treasured, and she loves him so much she could “eat him up.” Also, perhaps it is true that at the core of fruits, like mangoes, we find seeds. You children are the flowering and extension of her Self (and your father) and like the current ancient Bodhi trees, they are continuations of the original tree, and represent an ongoing chain of life and love.
In the third dream your brother is the age he is now. All grown up, and thus symbolically linked to the mountain. It moves your mom as just yesterday he was but a little fruit on her tree of Love and now he’s become a mountain.
Here comes perhaps your mother’s feelings about men. She may feel (and perhaps rightly so) that women, including herself, have been seen as second class citizens, there to nurse babies, change diapers, cook and clean and then the boy grows up and forgets who wiped his butt for him when he couldn’t do it.
He becomes a mountain, proud, tall and “above it all”, and this may make your mom wish he would get over himself a bit and “fall” back into the valley from which he rose. This is both love and also a bit of anger. After all, it’s your mom’s unconscious that “writes” the dream as it were. This is why she’s so upset, she wants to see herself as all love and flowers and the idea she could be mad at her son is not comfortable. Then she dashes him to the ground and wakes up terrified, unconsciously guilty of having normal human feelings.
Tell your mom she’s done nothing wrong. If she believes you she will stop suffering. If she doesn’t believe you she might have to sit under a tree :)
Finally, the dreams could also have a wider meaning for all of us. We all want to be happy. We are all afraid we’ve done something wrong and don’t quite deserve happiness, we fear being not good enough, left behind, etc. This is the work of the lower mind—it keeps us alive, but also unhappy.
The higher mind does appreciation, happiness, peace, love, etc. Perhaps our collective dream is to become more loving, to find solace for our sorrows, not alone under a tree but together under a tree big enough to shelter all of us, which is more like the idea of a tree than any particular tree.
And so it is in the spirit of loving kindness that I admit that I cannot know the meaning of your mother’s dreams, but only that I wish your family well and hope my ideas help spark her best Self to find the meaning, and more importantly the love and freedom to trust that she is not alone and her children are truly safe. Maybe even grandchildren will come one day and you kids will be relieved to have help with raising them and she will be happier than ever just to catch them as they fall from the mysterious tree of life :)
Sweet Dreams to your family
Hello! My name is kate and I have a 5 years old daughter and an 8 years old brother living with me. Im the one who took care of them since they were babies upto now. Just an hour ago, while on my duty break, i had a dream that i was on a bridge with my friend and then when were about to walk through, the bridge started to crack and move. My friend manage to jump but i didnt. The last time i saw was that the water is up and about to slap on my whole body. Then after that, i saw my lil bro. He was uneasy. So i asked him what’s wrong. When i opened his shirt, I saw bruises in the chest part, really big and even at the back and some part on his arms. Its like a wounded bruise. And I can see it fresh. I asked him many times where he got it, but it took several questions before he was able to answer. I cant even remember what he said when I asked who did it. Then after that, I saw my daughter, same situation with my brother, but her wounds and bruises are worst. So emotions come to me and I felt very mad. I wanted to know who did it to them. But when I was asking her about it, my alarm rang and woke up. What does this means? It really bothers me alot. Please help. Thanks
Hi Kate,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
If you read through the other dreams and comments you will get an idea about how to think of your own dream. This might help you see that you’re not alone, and that might help you feel less frightened and also have better dreams.
A couple of hints, however: a bridge could be a symbol of a connection between two parts of yourself, or two states of consciousness. It could also be a symbol of a relationship (that connects two people).
The bridge falls, the water threatens to “slap” your whole body. Water could mean feelings, or the mother. Maybe this dream is talking about how you have felt hurt and angry in the past (symbolized by bruises on the child). Your not thinking about or remembering your own hurt could connect to the wanting to know how the child was hurt.
Maybe you are crossing from child to parent, and the falling bridge means no going back (to place of pain) and instead going forward to awake reality (where your kids are not being hurt, hopefully).
Hope this helps & Sweet Dreams
The other night I had a dream about my 5 year old daughter falling from steps straight to the ground. They were like flights of steps you see in a school. I was afraid myself walking up these flights of steps. They were very steep as well. When we got to the top I was happy to finally make it, but my daughter was playing around right at the top. I kept saying come on sweetie, let’s go. Well for some reason the top steps were even steeper than the lower ones and the spacing between them was much wider too. I was afraid I was going to fall through them, and she actually did. I watched as she fell down through the steps and dropped to the ground. All I could do is say nooooooo! I woke up before I could rush to the bottom to see if she was alright. She was alive and crying though. I don’t know how many flights these steps were…maybe 4 flights. What does this mean?
Hi Carissa,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
Please do read through the other dreams and you will see some ways to think about your own.
A couple of hints: steps could symbolize developmental steps. Things seem to get harder as you go higher… growing up is hard, childhood has it’s challenges but parenting is even harder. The dream shows the obvious, but you need compassion and support.
AND you need to think about life when you were four and five. (four flights, five year old girl… reminding you of life when you were that age, a time when you might have “fallen through the cracks”).
The good news is that this isn’t really about your daughter but about you, and about how you felt overwhelmed. By being a good mom and helping your kid not fall through the cracks when you are awake you heal the past and the dreams will evaporate because you don’t need them to tell you your feelings.
Read the other dreams for more insights, particularly on how we can sometimes unconsciously feel angry toward our kids (for being exhausting) and this can turn into nightmares sometimes.
Sweet Dreams
Please help I had a dream last night that my 2 year old daughter and 4 year old son were riding there trikes and there is a gap in my fence (in real life) in my dream they went thru the fence and on the high way and got hit by a semi my daughters head flew off and my son was laying on the side of the road I woke up balling my eyes crng please
Hi Lacey:
As written above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
A couple of hints though: the fence is a boundary and so the boundary that separates our children from the world might protect them, but in actuality there is a gap in the fence… thus the idea that we share one world, perhaps at some deep or transcendent level we also share a mind or a consciousness.
The highway, where everyone goes, is fast, but dangerous, at least for trikes.
At the personal level, read the dreams above to consider how your past may have made you feel unsupervised and subsequently at risk (the head flying off could symbolize a radical stopping of thinking, as it is our thoughts that seem to bring our suffering).
Beyond this personal level may be a collective level: the message being that all our children need to be protected, and thus all us so-called grown-ups need to work together, at least in our hearts, to consider what safe highways (public commerce), safe fences (personal boundaries) might look like in a world at peace instead of relentless business, busyness and suffering for too many of the world’s children.
In “Peter and the Wolf” the boy is safe in the garden, but tempted out by the wolf. In Eden things are good, then one person eats the wrong fruit and it’s all ruined. Are these insights into reality, or insights into nightmares, into the stories we tell ourselves, but which merely make us suffer, from which we do not seem able to wake up?
Perhaps be glad that your children are okay, realize that you are okay, and meditate on a shared wish we could all cultivate: that all of us be okay.
My thought for you today: listen to John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and then read stories with your children. Mend your fence and wish for those without houses much less fences that their children will be safe as well. And wish that all truck drivers will never face the horror of hitting a child with their truck.
Wishing you Sweet Dreams and a Lovely Waking Day. Namaste :)
Hi there
Would you help me understand my horrible dream please.
I am in a block of flats with my 6 year old son and my father.
There is a balcony that we are all standing on and the view is of hundreds and hundreds of trees . The balcony is set right where all of the tree tops end. There are so many trees you can’t see the ground.
All if a sudden my father runs and dives off of the balcony, as if you would into a swimming pooll. There is someone else with me, I don’t know who – they have no face. Instead of running down to my dad we just discuss why he would of done it!
As we are talking I watch my son do a streetdance move over the balcony too into the trees below.
We run down the stairs, with every step I’m hoping he is alive.
As we find him he is sitting face up on the floor with a few people around him.
I can’t go anywhere near him, I cry and then I woke up!
Please help me, it’s really affected me x
Hi Melody,
Not sure if you read the post above, but it says: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
So… please consider reading some of what other people have dreamed and what I’ve suggested about these dreams.
A couple of hints: Trees could symbolize spirit (trees of knowledge, life, ancestors, higher consciousness, deep roots, patience, wisdom, etc.) The balcony is on a man-made structure, and the father symbolically goes from “above nature” to back to nature. Perhaps this symbolizes the understanding that we all die, all go back to nature? Or maybe that we all need to come down to earth and live amongst nature rather than the way we do, putting ourselves above nature as if we aren’t part and parcel of it in the first place.
Then the child doing a “street dance” (a way of moving connected to urbanizaton) to return to the forest, to land “face up” (i.e. awake to reality, not dead but actually alive, whereas our world can often seem false and dead).
Thus maybe the father and child parts of you are showing you the way to come down from your place of anxiety (above, on a balcony, because you fear you are below or less than) and thus you follow the male aspect (power) back to the feminine place (earth/nature).
Maybe it’s a good dream, at least if it inspires you to take a walk in nature with your dad and you son and realize you are happy to be alive together.
Sweet Dreams
OK I have two babies one is 4 months and the other is about to be two and the 4 month old sleeps with her father and I. And for a week now I have been having the same dream that I can’t find my 4 month old in the bed, like she is not in the bed with us at all but I see my soon to be 2 year old in her spot but he is 4 months old again but when I wake up my little girl is the one there and my 2 year old is in his bed. Please tell me what that means.
HI April,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
I think if you take some time to read the other dreams and comments you will get understanding of your own dream.
A couple of hints to get you started:
Here we have possibly a dream as wish. You may feel guilty that the older one is jealous of the younger one (perhaps you were an older sibling?) and so you identify with the older child, and the nostalgia you have for when they were a baby (and you first fell in love with your baby) and thus the forbidden wish to go back in time (which makes the new baby disappear and the first baby young again) comes out as a nightmare where you have lost your new baby.
This is the dilemma of expanding love. The child in you sees limited love and so is jealous, by projection, of the girl. Perhaps you project your own child self onto your daughter and you are experiencing a memory of some psychological trauma in your family in which you felt like you were not really seen or made secure when you were a newborn?
Perhaps you are unconsciously jealous of your husband “loving another woman” in the form of the new baby and you want to go back to you and two men rather than he and two women :)
All of this is rather silly in the light of day, but in the nightmare space it’s rather terrifying.
Conclusion: you’re a loving mom, there is more than enough for everybody, even you are not invisible and thanks to the expanding nature of love you will all live happily ever after as your family becomes four.
Do read the other dreams for more ways to think about it & Sweet Dreams
Hello, My name is Delilah and I have been having this same dream multiple times now and I’m starting to be concerned. I live in an apartment on the third floor and there’s this little boy on the third floor as well. I have no idea who he is, never talked to him, I don’t even know his name, but for some odd coming reason I keep having this same dream about him. The dream always end with him falling out of the window or balcony on the third floor and no one ever being around to help or catch him. I always witness it but he never dies due to the dream ending. I’m not exactly superstitious but I am concerned, do you know why or what this dream means? Serious answer please and thank you:)
HI Delilah,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
Still, a couple of hints to get you started: Perhaps you had some sort of loss or disappointment when you were the age of the boy?
This would make even more sense, symbolically, if the boy were 3, it’s the “third floor” and it’s recurring.
It’s possible the you see him unattended, and that could provoke the fear he could come to harm, but it’s important to, at least when awake, note the difference between thinking something and making something actually happen.
It’s good you’re not superstitious, and if you have any reason to actually think the child is being neglected you might call Child Protective Services and report your concern (but this would be more relevant if you were witnessing abuse or obvious neglect).
Turning to the psyche, then you are well-advised to read some of the other dreams, as what they suggest may relate to what your dream means too.
Perhaps you can remind yourself that if you see a child falling from a balcony you are probably dreaming. If you can realize you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming you can fly and rescue the child, or perhaps just change the dream (since it’s your brain that’s making it up)… or maybe you can ask the child in the dream: why are you falling? What’s the matter? Can I help catch you?
Sounds a little corny, but maybe that would be an imaginative way to help heal some sort of loss or stuckness in yourself.
Certainly wishing you Sweet Dreams
I dream of dropping my 5 n a half month old daughter down the stairs she slides across the floor… its my house but not the house I live in as it’s a different lay out…. but same flooring then I keep her under my jumper…(jumper is blue) for a while to keep her safe then I wake up
Hi Sharon,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
I really think if you take some time to read some of the other dreams above, even the first 2 or 3, you will get some tools for considering your own dream.
A hint to start you off: maybe sliding down stairs symbolizes going deeper into the unconscious, thus your child-part of yourself is leading you to look deeper into your own feelings.
You hide your child self, your vulnerable but authentic self under the blue jumper. Blue could be symbol for sadness, thus you maybe hide your true self inside your melancholy? Maybe you had some sadness when you were 5 months old and your child is triggering the chance to heal?
Certainly wishing you Sweet Dreams
I’m not sure if this is where you post your dreams, but I hope so! My name is samantha. I am 23 years old, had my son when I was 21, making my son now a year and a half. I have never had any dreams of anything bad happening to him, until last night. It was one of the scariest dreams I’ve had. It’s short and weird so here it goes. It was dark outside and I was by myself. I was facing a building with a rooftop deck. The building itself wasn’t very high but high enough. I looked on top of the roof and saw my son sleeping with two lions next to him. Real lions. They weren’t doing anything to him, just watching over him almost. I saw him wake up and he looked at me, making him start to come to me. I couldn’t get to the top in time so I started yelling at him to stop, don’t do that! He regressed to crawling and began crawling and crawled right off the side. I was under the roof trying to catch him but I didn’t catch him. He fell and I heard his head hit the ground. It sounded terrible and I was filled with pain and scared out of my mind. I ran over to him and he was fine. He didn’t cry, there was no blood, almost as if nothing ever happened. Then all the sudden he turned into one of my old guy friends I used to have, yet I was still worried about his head and asked if he was really okay and he said, “yeah I’m fine” the dream is one of the weirdest ones I’ve ever had, and worst. I don’t ever want to have another one of my son falling :(
Hi Samantha,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
So… a couple of hints to get you started anyway: The lions might represent your power, perhaps the fantasy of a couple that is powerful and working in harmony (not sure if you’re a single mom, if you feel equal and powerful with your son’s father, etc.)
The child might be your child self, thus the idea of the “kings of the jungle” guarding the child (innocent/sacred part of yourself) on a roof (symbol perhaps of higher consciousness, a view or perspective on life) could be an ideal image of power and innocence together in higher consciousness or even some sort of spirituality.
Your conscious self, who is “lower” than your ideal self, seems to wake and draw the baby toward you (regressing, perhaps symbol of your own desire to go back in your past and be protected, which maybe you were not as a child?).
Instead of you going to higher consciousness the child drops to lower consciousness, perhaps this is why it’s a nightmare, teaching you that you must go up rather than ask your child to come down.
Finally, the old guy friend who gets his head knocked might represent both that person (and suggests perhaps you thought he was a big baby and hurt your feelings in some way, as you create the dream, thus you bashed his head) but also it represents the guy part of you, at street level. Poetically we have two lions above and two younger people below, two relationships, maybe the past (child, old friend), present (you dealing with it) and future (lions).
Hope that helps, read the other dreams if you really want more ways to think about your own. Sweet Dreams
Hello there, I’m Lauren (31) I have 3 children, a boy and 2 girls.
Last night I had a nightmare which I found very disturbing, it began as though I were watching a film that I was in but I could feel all the emotions my “character” self was feeling. I was in a cliff top castle with my fiance and my daughter’s, we were fleeing from solders (think knights of the relm type theme) they were killing everyone and we had to escape, my fiance led us down a passage that lead to a narrow cliff edge and was talking about how we had to jump but it wasn’t likely he could get us all to survive the fall into the sea, he seemed crazed and my “character” self was very reluctant to go towards the edge and was scared. I then felt as though my “character” self was stuck (like an invisible forcefield that was sound proof) in the stone door way watching as my fiance led my daughters to the edge, my fiance was speaking to my daughter’s then my eldest daughter (7) nodded her her, briefly glanced at my “character” self then jumped off the cliff, I (the “viewer”) could see from above that she made it into the sea, then my younger daughter (4) was stood at the edge with her back towards my “character” self, I could feel the panic of my “character” growing in me “viewer” then the force field and the barrier of me being the viewer shattered and I was in the dream, I ran to stop my daughter, she jumped, I reached the edge just in time to see her hit the cliff and smash into the ground, I saw her head smashed, my fiance was blurred but smiling, I was screaming but it was silent, I wanted to try to save her even though i knew she was dead so I then lept down shouting her name historically, then I woke up crying
can you please help me to understand what this may mean
Hi Lauren,
As noted above: [Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
A couple of hints to start you off. Maybe you unconsciously want to be a princess in a castle with your prince (fiance) and unconsciously solve the problem as in a fairytale (gruesome, naked unconscious acted out) and thus the children “die” tragically but you have nothing to do with it (except your unconscious “wrote” the dream). Still, it’s just a dream and not “real” so you wake up glad to have your kids (and uneasy about forbidden aggression, but repressing emotion leads to acting out, violence, the world we sadly live in of cruelty and unconsciousness—but I guess we’re all working on it together and want to live in peace).
Read some of the other dreams, maybe it’s about your past (it made me smile that you wrote: “I then lept down shouting her name historically” I think you meant “hysterically” which itself is internalized sexism, but “historically” may be a clue that you felt like a kid falling off a cliff once upon a time). Think about it—you’ll probably get a lot of insights :)
Sweet Dreams
I had a dream that my partner and I were walking and we hadn’t seen a cliff that he stepped off. I went to catch him but i was too late, and I woke up sitting straight up in bed. I know this isn’t about our kids, but I believe that the partner relationship is really important to parenting
HI Caren,
You dream about cliffs much the way you navigated this blog post… you didn’t actually read it, and thus fell off the cliff at the top of this long line of dreams and then fell into this comment box, where I direct you back to the top, where it is written:
[Please note that I cannot continue to interpret individual dreams at this time, however if you read through these dreams you will very likely find insights into your own dream—and you will discover that you are not alone in having such nightmares.]
Yes you are right that partner relationships are important, but if you treat your partners the way you treated me as a writer, i.e. meaning well, feeling scared, not really thinking for yourself and asking me to do the work for you, then you are at risk of feeling that others “let you down” and then you feel like you’re falling (not supported).
If I hold your hand and make it all better, then I’m like the good daddy who no partner can ever measure up to (a pretend dad, an idealized perfect person who probably looked to you for intimacy while dropping your mom off the cliff of adult intimacy). If I demand you “man-up” and read the other dreams, do the work, own your smarts and your power I risk making you feel angry, criticized and “let down” (one more man who doesn’t care, doesn’t get it).
If you really want things to improve with your partner, then I challenge you to share this comment with him, and then not get mad if he smiles and nods and agrees with me. It’s not the boys ganging up on the girls, we men are just as lost and falling off the cliff as the women, and when it comes to parenting we’re all a bit lost at sea.
And if you really want my “two cents” on how to serve your kids, and yourself and your partner you can read the book I took seven years to write in just such service to parents like you, but it’s not an “easy” book and it’s not filled with “cookbook” advice, still, like your loving of your kid and your partner, I did my best to put love in it and hope it might make a real difference to you (particularly chapters on self and self-esteem, and also on beauty, and also on oppositional feelings, and also on anxiety and on sadness…
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=bruce+dolin+privilege+of+parenting&x=0&y=0
Definitely wishing you all best in any event, but particularly wishing you Sweet Dreams, a sweet waking life and a sweet and more conscious relationship with your partner
I had a dream that I was in my kitchen talking with my sister and we suddenly see a shadow on the window and it is my 4 yr old daughter. She somehow went out the window and climbed up towards the roof. I went out to get her but as I was climbing up I stopped to think about how I would get her down (there was a lot of snow and I thought I would slip) then I suddenly here something and go around a parked car and see my daughter on the floor, her shirt was pulled up and my deceased father was with her saying she hit herself in the chest. She looked lifeless and I started crying and saying I wasn’t fast enough. The weird thing is that I never heard her fall, I heard movement but never a sound that indicated a fall and I kept away because I didn’t want to find out if she was dead or not.
Hi Carol,
As noted above I cannot keep interpreting dreams for readers but try this thread for some ideas on it:
http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-about-children-being-abused-or-traumatized/
certainly wishing you a happy waking and sleeping time of it now :)
Please help – I know you said you weren’t interpreting dreams due to the demand, but I need to understand this one. In my dream, my mom and dad were watching TV downstairs. My dad told her he was going to bed and went upstairs. She started up by scooting backwards up each step – her wheelchair was at the top of the landing. I was telling her to wait for me, I would help her. She wasn’t listening and continued. I yelled louder and louder, still she kept coming up. Then, she stood up, she was naked, turned and looked at me then tumbled forward down the steps face first. She rolled over her neck and into a table and chair. I ran down screaming for her mom, mom, mom, mom. As I got to her, she was breathing, opened her eyes and turned over. She grabbed my hand and started crawling, calling out my name over and over even though I was right there. I screamed for my dad to call 911 but nothing came out the first two times and then he did and I woke up. Please help me understand what this means. I’m so upset over it.
Hi Jen,
Please do read the other dreams, but a couple of hints to get you started: both your parents go “upstairs” which could signify higher consciousness, or perhaps “heaven” or some higher plane. Your mom “goes backward” signifying a mother part of yourself going up, but backward. This symbolic part of you “reaches the top” and is naked, symbolic of undefended, unmasked, original/innocent in one’s “birthday suit.”
Then this mother figure deliberately throws herself down the stairs, and this suggests that you may be angry at your mother and unconsciously throw her down, and yet it could suggest that you gain power in your life by “playing the victim,” using being hurt or helpless as a way of getting what you want.
Perhaps the dream suggests that when you play the victim mother you are linked to the terrified child self, and thus the unconscious could be trying to bring these feeling states (angry and self-destructive/burdened by pathetic mother) together into one awake consciousness.
Perhaps you won’t like this interpretation, but if you stop having the dream maybe we are onto something (i.e. time to own you power of direct love and communication and heal the past where the personality is divided into helpless manipulative caregiver and terrified dependent child).
Good luck and sweet dreams
Hi, my husband and I got married on the top of a mountain in the Carolinas. We went there to visit when our daughter was 3. We recently went back and visited again with our daughter now 5 and our 12 month old son. Before the trip I kept getting this image of him falling off the mountain. I was very nervous and scared when we were there with him,making sure to keep him close to me andaway from the edge. We left and everything was fine. I have since kept getting the image in my head and when my son is on our bed at home my daughter says “mom, he is going to fall off the cliff”! She was also saying this before we left on our trip. It scares me because I don’t want to lose my children, but I don’t know how to overcome this.
Another reason it scares me is when I was in school I had a girl in my class that I was friends with, and I had this recurring thought about what would happen if she died. She ended up drowning before our senior year. Please help, thank you!!!!
Given that I can’t really keep up with the demand for dream interpretation that I have been receiving and that I don’t have time to organize the material into a proper guidebook to nightmares about our children I have elected to take an interim step: to offer nine blog posts dealing with the most common categories of nightmare with some insights about overall themes and a quick guide to get a reader moving toward nightmares that might most closely resemble their own.
My hope is that if you find the best general category, and then go to that list of dreams which have been organized in terms of the age of the child in the dream, you may find some insights that you can then use to think about your own particular dream (and hopefully feel less afraid and more conscious about what is being stirred up for you and about how you personally discover is best to take care of your own self and your child).
Note that the threads are long and you must be patient in scrolling down through dreams until you find some that match the age or situation of your own dream.
While I realize it is still cumbersome to scroll down through multiple dreams until you reach one matching your child or your theme, my hope is that it will be somewhat easier than the random thread of comments at the original post.
So… If your dream involves water or drowning click here: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/that-sinking-feeling%E2%80%94dreams-about-children-drowning/
If your nightmare involves falling or flying try here: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-about-children-falling/
If the core dread is kids running away or being hurt from neglect click here: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-about-children-running-away-or-being-neglected-or-abandoned/
If kidnappers or scary animals, bad guys or monsters are the subject go here: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-of-children-being-kidnapped-or-chased/
If the child actually does die in the dream click here: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-where-children-die/
If the dream involves overt abuse or graphic trauma read from here: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/nightmares-about-children-being-abused-or-traumatized/
If the dream involves poison try here: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/dreams-about-children-poisoned/
If there is a family feud or families fighting see these: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/dreams-where-families-fight/
And finally, if the dream doesn’t quite fit any of the above categories but you suspect that it is teaching you something consider these dreams: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2013/08/04/dreams-as-teachers/
And… Sweet Dreams
Hi. I dreamt one of my son last night. My son is 8 years old. My dream was we are outside and in a high place and i didnt know where is this place. My son went into this gate (in a high location). When i see him, i shouted his name and ask to hold. But he was out of balanced and fell down. I was so afraid that i dont want to see him. I was going down the stairs but so afraid of looking at him down. I just knew that there are people down there that was running and rushing to him. Im crying and i know that my son would be probably dead by then. But when i reached him, he is alive and he just have wound in his head. Im crying so hard and thats when i woke up. Please help me to interpret my dream. I was so afraid. Thank you
Hi Carol, If you read the post and recent comments you will understand why I cannot interpret individual dreams at this time. Still, I encourage you to read other dreams and comments and trust you will get tools to interpret your own dream. Hint: maybe “falling” could mean a part of you has to “come down to earth” and so the unconscious is offering a “grounding” counterpoint to unrealistic “inflation” or escape from painful feelings (trapped in parenting, fearful to acknowledge anger that you feel toward loved ones, including children, or to the part of yourself that resists “growing up” like Peter Pan who flies but doesn’t come to grown-up reality).
Certainly wishing you sweet dreams and safe landings for you and all of yours :)
I’m sorry I have read all these dreams and I can’t find one that compares to mine. Involving my deceased father of 15 yrs. Dream was : a current time with. My father and my mother and my oldest son 28. And myself. Owned a business. Oldest sin opened a window later that night my father went to close the window, a gush of wind came and caught the screen and dad fell out the window I ran to him just as he died. I awoke from the dream abd cried the rest of the night . not understanding since my dad has been gone for so long. Please help me understand this. From margie
Hi Margie,
While I’m no longer interpreting individual dreams, I appreciate that at least you tried and read other dreams. A couple of thoughts on this would be that your “typo” of “sin” when you meant “son” might reveal an unconscious clue: you lost your father when your son was only 13; that was when your son was coming into puberty/sexuality. Sexuality is how your son came to be, but the idea of having a mouthy and difficult young man to parent (and all teens can be a bit challenging) right when your father passed, might have linked “original sin” (birth of your son/sex) with death/loss of your father. The dream might represent the simple wish to be a family business, with everyone alive and included. “Closing a window” might be symbolic for your inner father figure showing that there needs to be a psychological boundary between the living and the dead. Wind is possibly symbolic for spirit or soul (inspire, expire). Perhaps you struggled to be able to grieve the tragic loss of your dad and now, for some reason, perhaps your son being all grown up, perhaps you becoming the age your dad was at some significant moment? In any event, your dream could be your unconscious process to fully recognize your father’s death, but at the same time link your own soul or spirit with him, and with the eternal love that just may be shared by an individual family, maybe even a love that could become a more conscious experience shared by more humans as we realize that life itself may be a sort of sleeping and what we call death may be akin to some sort of “wind” or liberation of spirit. That is beyond my ability to know, so mostly I would just seek to send you human compassion for the loss and offer a bit of fellowship because it’s my experience that sadness shared is less terrible than sadness suffered in isolation.
Certainly wishing Sweet Dreams ahead and a sweet waking life too :)
Hi,
I am going through tough time. I had a dream of saving a boy who was maybe 10 yrs old and i was successful in doing so. I actually begged some authority who was going to hurt him and he fell from above in my arms but when falling he fell on in my arms but his feet touched the ground and that part of ground was having burning coal. Hence he hurt his feet.
I wanted to know what is the meaning of it.
Thanks in advance
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
I dream that my only daughter fall from the stairs but i was able to hold her. What does it mean? Thanks.
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
I had a dream that me and my 3 sons, aged 17, 14, 10, we’re running for our lives on a bridge. The bridge was extremely high and there was a rock bed below. I was able to save my oldest and youngest, but my middle boy falls off of the bridge to the rocks below. The dream was so vivid, that I woke up crying. What does this mean?
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
My mum has dreamed that we went somewhere and my brother he had a fight a boy and my mom she didn’t let him beat the boy back so then he jumped off a balcony.
Can anyone tell me that what does this dream mean?????
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
Hi I had a terrible nightmare. I dreamt that my husband and I were on top of a very high building . I was afraid. The thing isn’t hate I don’t remember if the baby was my son or my grandson thatbqaa with us and other people.
They were all watching something laying on things like hammocks from poles. I kept an eye out on the baby and my husband was just over butches corner showing that he wasn’t afraid of heights. When I was about to tell him to get near the baby. The baby was bouncing on the hammock and he fell off hit the floor and fell of the building. I just stared at my husband and minutes later I just heard and baby cry as it hits the floor. I woke up with my heart beating fast.. I thanked god it was only a nightmare..
Hi Bertha,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
I had a nightmare about my daughter falling out of tree. She fell straight down and landing on her feat, and compressed like accordion. i woke up right away and went to check up in her, I couldn’t go back asleep the rest of the night, What do you thinks that means?
Hi John,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
one hint to get you started; apples don’t fall far from trees so perhaps you are dreaming of your child as a way of understanding that when you were a child you “fell” and got compressed (inhibited, hurt, etc.) but “like an accordion” you may have some music or self-expression to share with us, if you are encouraged to speak (or sing, or play). You too, apparently, “landed on your feet” (and parenting is your greatest feat) so perhaps you are indeed a strong and loving tree and when you have to set limits with your child you are preparing them for life and not punishing or dropping them the way you may have felt in the past.
All Best Wishes in any event, asleep and awake :)
I had a dream that my 3 year old son fell into a a dark hole (well) when I leaned over I couldn’t see him it was dark but it’s weird cause I don’t remember much about that just know he was playing and dont know if he leaned, tripped or got to close to it. then my dream just skipped forward and I don’t know how many days later I just know after that in the same dream my 4 year old daughter was playing around and I noticed a bunch of plywood and didn’t want for her to get hurt and told her to move from there she of course took one last pick at what she was playing with and fell into a well too. I didn’t even know there was a well there so I ran and leaned over I could see her clear but she was not moving or anything I screamed and I felt so helpless not being able to help her and I know we were way out in the country that it would take paramedics long to get there. my husband was there but he was working on a vehicle I don’t even know who’s house that was that we were at I know it was at I’m assuming one of his friends or somebody he knew. Then I woke up and I don’t if either one of my babies were ok or saved or what happens after.
Hi Erica,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
a couple of hints: the well could symbolize the feeling of depression and feeling trapped, lonely and “in the dark” or clueless about how to get out of it?
Having your children be “in the well” could symbolize your own childhood experience, and being able to see your female child could symbolize that this emotional state is coming into awareness through your identification with your daughter?
Certainly wishing you all the best, asleep and awake :)
It’s weird cause my sons well was dark I couldn’t see him at all and on his there wasn’t much to it just that he fell it was dark in there and then jumped to my girls accident didnt show me trying to call 911 or anything just went on to my daughters accident and her well was kinda lit to where I can see her, why is that?
Hi. I had a dream i was with my daughter at a school oval. She was about ten years old. She looked beautiful next to me in her uniform and blue ribbon. We where in a small grandstand overlooking the balcony. There was a “teacher” telling everyone she had found this frizzby like toy and when you spin it you can fly. I little bit like Mary Poppins. I looked ant my daughter and we both agreed for her to have a try. She did and all i saw was her falling straight down and i looked over and all i saw was her flat on the ground with a little blood pouring on the ground. Very disturbing. What would you think this is? My inner child with trust issues? Or changing my life from the people who disappointed me? very upsetting.
Amanda
Hi Amanda,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
And all best wishes :)
Hi. I had a what I thought was a dream it started with my sister and turned to be being in my room with my son and two girls .I was cleaning my 16yr old had the brom. I asked her for it but insted she held it out the window. As she pulling more and more away from me she falls out the second floor. That’s when my dream turns into a nightmare. I tell her sister call nine one one she replied I knew that would happen. As I run down the stairs I see their stepgrandpa he died 2014. And I say to him my daughter fell out the window he didn’t move he stayed sitting g in his recliner chair . As I get put the back door my daughter is sitting in that same chair win do with a yellow towel wrapped around her head looking at me really sad and scared . Is he trying to tell me to watch her ? Looking at her woke me up from sleep and could not go back to sleep my heart is crumbled after that dream/ nightmare. Hope you read it thank you for your time.
Hi Karla,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All Best Wishes :)
I have a baby boy who is only 6 weeks old and i keep having the same dream where im falling off a tall building but i have my wee baby boy with me.
Hi Michelle,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All Best Wishes :)
Hi there, I recently had a terrible dream that my almost one year escaped through a door that leads out onto a balcony or roof top of a building, his running around near the edge which is roughly waist height on him, I quickly race to grab him with my 5 year old daughter behind me, he stops and leans over the edge and I know and can feel that he is leaning over too much and as I quickly race to grab him my daughter is pulling on me from behind and that pull as I get close to my son is what stops me from saving him and he falls off the edge. I know it’s a dream but it has consumed me on a daily basis, it’s upset me so much it’s all I think about and replay it over and over again how in that split second if she hasn’t have grabbed me I could have saved him. I had a traumatic birth with my son where I was told I might possibly die and not wake up, I did make it through in the end with a long recovery and had to have a hysterectomy amongst bladder surgery ect
His first birthday is coming up and I’m not sure if it’s all connected somehow, but I just want it out of my head
Hi Aleesa,
As I am no longer interpreting dreams at this blog, I did write something specifically for dreamers in your situation, so please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
Given what you say about your traumatic birth experience it does seem that you may still be working through that trauma and possibly could benefit from some therapy to work it out and let it go/process it as a memory that is safely in the past.
Certainly wishing you and your family all the best, asleep and awake :)
Hi Bruce. I have read every post and have found some items that may pertain to my dream, but it is a bit unusual. In my dream, my son is about 18 months old and falls off 17th floor balcony railing & between an AC unit. I make to the edge to see him land face first and the cement crack beneath him. There is no blood. I fall hysterical and try to get to my mother thru the sliding glass doors and when I finally get the doors open I can’t speak I am so hysterical. What’s so strange is my son is actually 39 years of age now. I cannot recall any traumatic issues at 17 years old or 18 months old. I feel it might have something to do with letting go of my “baby” so to speak. It woke me up frightened and with chest pains until I could calm down. Please help
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for taking the time to read and getting as far along as you did in your self-analysis. I’m not sure if you read this post, which is a general summation and guide to self-interpretation, but in case you missed it, check it out: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
Beyond that, I might speculate that your insight about turning 60 and where you are in the span of life might be right on target for your interpretation. Your son could symbolize that which you most treasure, the very life that came forth from you but which you did not “create” in the sense of ego. We create our meaning, but children are the true natural world and quite a wonder.
The world we live in becomes literal, to us, based on the stories we are told and later tell ourselves (i.e. money is important, concrete is hard, tall buildings are impressive, men are important and should be in charge of the world). In many ways the world seems a mess and it seems that many of us are at the mercy of crazy people with power, money and even nuclear weapons. AND we are in a “#metoo” moment which is not necessarily about vilifying men but rather about women asserting what is only natural and true: Equality (respect, equal power and participation).
Thus, you may unconsciously throw your 39 year old male child from a great height, symbolically expressing both a wish for him, and men, to “come down to earth” and to the “concrete reality” of things like aging and the inevitability of death (which our materialistic and manic society increasingly denies, and thus unconsciously moves closer to collective disaster; these were similar conditions that lead up to WW I and WW II, no to mention rises and falls of earlier civilizations). Conversely, the son manages to “crack the concrete” with his face; he literally “faces” reality, the ground, the earth and, symbolically, The Mother of us all. In breaking the concrete we see a “breakthrough” which is painful, but powerful.
This might be akin to themes of death and rebirth and this theme is furthered by passing through “sliding glass doors” (unlike concrete, we can see through them even if they stop us from proceeding). You reunite with your mother, but in a “hysterical” state (the root word/idea of “hysterical” once meant “wandering uterus” and hints at the sexism in the very idea of being scared speechless is the realm of female gender rather than human emotion). An infant before 18 months does not have a fully developed process for memory creation and retrieval and is a sort of Buddha of the present moment. After that language develops more fully and with it our stories of ourselves.
Perhaps you are the mother who has been waiting to reunite with your archetypal wordless original Self. You are the mother who can care and be concerned and soothe and protect; and you are the original being who is spiritual and eternal in some sense but scared and a fish out of water in human experience; AND you are the adult about to turn 40 (mid-life crisis time) where we have achieved and learned and start to wonder what it’s all about anyway, thus slowly preparing not just for death, but possibly for Love and Life lived with greater wisdom and compassion and an unfolding sense that we are not our bag of bones and skin and avatars of social identity, or at least not only that, and certainly not permanently that.
Perhaps we are more, we are like nature and yet cannot fathom the source of us. From there we create religion which gets soon to be a tired old story that doesn’t help the way it once did, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t truth to spirit, just a need for new, less “concrete” stories. Stories are never ultimately True (in the sense of unchanging and eternal the way God would be conceptualized). Yet stories can be useful, teaching us to be kind or careful or honest the way fairy tales do. These old stories have lasted because they do have wisdom in them.
The new religion is science, and we can investigate the natural world using statistics as a method to get beyond emotions, but only to a certain point. Science can’t tell us if God exists, or how even the big bang came into being even if it can eventually tell us if the cosmos will burn out or fold back upon itself.
My thought would be to do my best to wish you well, and your mom and you son; to see if there might not be some rising consciousness in humans that could accept that we are mortal and choose to be nicer about it. I hope there is a better way forward, and as a man turning 58 this year I pass it back to you as a woman turning 60 (my wife will turn 60 this year as well) and humbly suggest that you guys make some interpretations and some suggestions and tell us some new stories that might help us make the transition to the next chapter in some way that sounds good, and fun and exciting you to.
In any event wishing you all the best, asleep and awake :)
PS – I have read all the post on nightmares of children dying and nightmares of children falling. I do believe it may also have something to do with my inner child dying as I will soon be 60. I don’t understand about the way he falls, the age difference of 18 months in my dream and currently 39 years, the cement cracking and being so hysterical no words will come out (this is common in many of my dreams)
Hi, I’m Ashley. I hope you can decipher this dream for me. I just had it a few minutes ago, while take a nap with my 15 month old daughter. My dreams are usually all over the place but what I remember was laying in some living room (not my own) with my daughter, and then I heard her father come in and there was a closed door to where he was, so I put my ear to the door and his friend Kyle was with him. And he was tell him to tell me what he thinks of me, saying my boyfriend wasn’t gonna tell me, and whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be nice. But I opened the door and was going to try and figure out what he wanted to say to me and then everything shifted and I was walking down this hallway to an open porch, and it seemed the fall off the porch was never ending. The porch railings had a railing going across the top, then the other two were criss crossed so, my daughter was under the crossed rails and I started screaming “Doug get her! Get her!” (That’s her father) and he did grab her, and when he brought her up he said she was trying to kiss the neighbours! It all makes no sense to me, but I was still so shooken up and scared when I woke. When she was a little younger, a few months after I had her I did have a dream I was strolling her down a hill and all of a sudden she was tumbling down the hill, it looked like she was sumersalting on her side… So I’ve had messed up dreams like this before…. Can you please tell me why this keeps reoccurring?
I hope I’m not too late either, the dates on the comments above are from some time ago.. 😞
Hi Ashley,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
And also consider reading the responses to other dreams about falling and you will very likely be able to interpret your own dream if you put in the effort.
Certainly wishing you all the best asleep and awake :)
Hi, I keep having this dream where my 4 year old son is getting lifted by a tornado on to my roof and then I try to get outside and he falls off on his back. He is still alive and I try to keep him still so he doesn’t further injure himself then when he lifts his head I wake up. It’s very unsettling. Any input on this?
Hi Amy,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
And all best wishes asleep and awake :)
Hi, I had this terrible dream last night that I dropped my 6 month old daughter off like 5 flights of stairs at a school and it was like in slow motion that I watched het fall looking terrified. I also like paused and saw get hit the ground with blood. Please help.
Hi Keli,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All Best Wishes :)
Hi Bruce,
Just wanted to say thank you, your posts have been ever so helpful :)
All the best
Gina
Thank you so much Gina!
Hello!
I am so glad I have come across your blog about children and scary dreams…
Please, I hope you can help me to understand the one I had this morning…
I dreamt that I was walking along with my older sister (I am 48 and she is 55) and with us was my niece (from my husband’s side) who is 5 years old. I see this little girl as a beautiful, placid child, very sweet.
So anyway, we were walking along and she ran off towards a tree log that was sticking out over the edge of an overpass that we were on and from where we were I could not see the height we were at, so it looked like the log was only a few feet off the ground and she wanted to walk along it. I yelled out to her “do you think it’s safe? Let me check it’s safe for you to go on!” But before I could finish my sentence she had taken a step onto it and slipped and fell from it… as I got near, I could see that it was actually about two storeys off the ground and she went straight down onto her head and the strange part was that she bounced straight back up and landed right in front of us and she was not dead but still breathing and looked a little pale and there was a bump on the top of her head, but no blood. I quickly bent down over her and held her and I knew I had to call an ambulance but I just wanted to tell her she was going to be ok first… and I didnt know in that moment whether she would be or not, but I tried to comfort her anyway and she was so small (smaller than she actually is). Anyway, I woke up then and felt quite unsettled about it… do you have any thoughts on that please? Thankyou :)
Dear Trish,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All Best Wishes, asleep and awake :)
Hi,
It was 7 am when i had this dream.
I am walking around a mall ( unable to recognise itt ) with both my kids – an elder son and the younger ine a girl.
We come up an escalator and as we reach the top, the ceiling is extremely low and seems like unfiniish3d construction. I tell them to watch their heads and as we walk around , i mentally think that i want to visit the brand ‘ Mango’. The kids run ahead of me and as i turn a bend i see them missing .
At this point my dream goes into slow motion until the very end ….h as i notice they have fallen down a plywood area in the floor and both have fallen down a floor and are laying still . Ii am trying to yell for help but i am struggling to talk. I run down to help and get help but unable to scream or call for help. They are both lying limp in my drream.
I woke up with tears in my eyes.
Please do help me understand this dream.
Thanks
Hi Shipra,
Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
One hint to get you started; you are in a mall, perhaps a symbol of a collective consciousness or expanded sense of self; you are going up an escalator, perhaps symbolizing rising consciousness, but then the ceiling is low—perhaps symbolizing the inner conflict, a repression of something back into the unconscious.
If you read the above link it will help you see how the repressed aspect could be anger or frustration as a parent, but it could also relate to feelings you had when you were the age of one or the other of your children?
In any event, wishing you all best asleep and awake :)
Hey,
I’m Shakyrah I’m currently 34 weeks and 5 days pregnant. I have a 5 year old son. Early this morning when I went back to sleep I had a dream that me and my family was in a grocery store but the store somehow looked weird because there was a big opening space in one part of the store where if you look down it was high enough to fall and possibly past away. Anyways, I dreamt my 5 year old was walking and slipped and fell into the big hole I instantly ran to the edge and seen him all the way at the bottom passed out I cried my heart out. I then woke up and was in shock I looked at my son and I started crying. What does this mean? Please help me understand.
Hi Shakyrah,
Please see:
http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
One hint to get you started… a grocery is a place you can get everything you need to feed yourself and your growing family, your five year old is probably a hand-full and it is unpleasant to consciously think that we need a break from our child, so perhaps we imagine a “hole” where the child fall, maybe symbolically back into the womb, not so much dead as not so much trouble as when they are asking for things all the time (as much as we love them, they are a lot of work).
Please read the link in more depth to find other clues to your dream, particularly about what happened when you were 5–did your mom get pregnant? Did you feel neglected back then, like you fell into a “hole” or a depression?
Certainly sending you and your family all best wishes, awake and asleep :)
I dreamed that I was washing clothes, my elder sister and my neice were bathing my 5year old daughter, there is a covered suck away pit there but my elder sister asked my neice to open it, after she opened my daughter was falling inside along with water and poo, when she was in and only her hands where left, she started crying and shouting for help, I was shouting for my sister or neice to help her her but noon did until I went inside to remove her.
What is the meaning of this dream
Hi Blessing,
Although I am no longer interpreting individual dreams at this time, a post that might help you interpret your dream for yourself might unlock the meaning for you:
http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
One hint to get you started: if your child might symbolize your own child-self, the fact that she goes into the “Suck away pit” could mean that your unconscious wants you to be aware that you are not poo, but that the fact that you may have felt thrown away or treated like garbage in your own childhood, now that you are a parent and love your child, helps you understand that all children deserve love and respect, and no children are shit. If your unconscious wants to help you heal any shame you may carry, it could start with understanding that you felt overwhelmed by shit in the past, but you are not shit and since you have become a loving parent you can certainly also give some love to your own child-self. In this way, giving our children what we might not have gotten is a way of healing ourselves and growing into our best selves.
If you want to learn more about how to understand our children, and how doing our best also heals ourselves, consider the book I wrote for parents like you;
https://www.amazon.com/Privilege-Parenting-Bruce-Dolin-ebook/dp/B006VOMQKQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1548543510&sr=8-1&keywords=bruce+dolin+privilege+of+parenting
All Best Wishes in any event, asleep and awake :)
I just dreamed my 12 year old fell down what looked like a deep pit where you stored thing in a ground. We were looking for a house to move into. And she and my oldest daughter was setting on the edge of the opening and my 12 yr old fell back into it and by the time I got to her she told me that it hurt and then before I could find out what hurt she passed away.
Hi Mary,
While I am no longer interpreting individual dreams at this time, this post will help you interpret your dream for yourself:
http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
Perhaps a hint to get you started; it could be that your 12 year old symbolizes your own self in the past, suggesting that you may have fallen into a depression right before you were coming into puberty. It could be about loss of innocence, feeling overwhelmed or sad, it could be reminding you that you have felt losses and now fear that the future will bring losses. Or you may have a totally different idea about your dream when you get a chance to think more carefully about it.
In any event, wishing you and your family all the best, asleep and awake :)
I’m sleeping with my 2 boys 10, and 4.. When I dream that I heard some rustling noises.. I woke up in my dream to see where those noises were coming from.. at the same time my boys woke up too and started following me.. then suddenly out of nowhere I find myself and my boys in a hotel lobby.. my little one started making silly noises and running around.. I tried to stop him from making those noises as he would be disturbing everyone.. then carried him and was walking..when I came across group of people who were sitting and chatting.. When they saw me carrying my son who was still crying and trying to free himself from me.. they tried to talk to him.. in the meantime my son got off from my arms (I tried to catch him but there was this lady in front of me who blocked my view) by this time he had ran to the balcony of this high building climbed the edge and simply jumped off.. I was shocked and fell down to the floor shouting. I woke up shouting with my son next to me. Let me mention here.. I don’t sleep in their room regularly.. only sometimes when my older son requests me.. (they both moved into their bedroom few months ago.. (before we were co-sleeping). My older one is highly sensitive and introvert character.. But my little one is very independent and quite obstinate. What ever he wants to do/have he will do it.
I can’t go back to sleep right now.. Just feeling so guilty for that incident to happen in my dream.
Hi Nadia,
Although I am no longer interpreting individual dreams, this link will help you interpret your dream nevertheless:
http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
One hint to get you started, feeling guilty about your dream (even though it was just a dream) may reveal that you are uncomfortable with feeling angry, and with conflicts, which may make it difficult to discipline your younger one who tests limits (and could even get hurt if not protected from his own lack of wisdom). Perhaps the dream is suggesting that you, or at least a part of you as symbolized by the younger child in the dream, would rather throw yourself off a building than be controlled. The people in the lobby might symbolize the part of you who is curious rather than ashamed about vitality and independence rather than judging or stifling this. I trust you are an excellent and loving parent, and that this dream is more about your own secret self who might like to break out of the current mood and “go to a hotel” and talk to some more grown-ups and not just kids all the time. This might not feel right at all, but interpreting dreams is more an art than a science, so hopefully you’ll read the other post and have some playful attitude toward understanding your own dream, your fears and your unconscious frustration, fear or anger.
All Best Wishes in any event, asleep and awake :)
Hi Bruce,
I just can’t believe it that how accurately you have interpreted my dream. Thanks a million 👍
hello bruce,
I juat dreamed of my 3 year old kid purpoaly jumping from the terrace and in bleeding and with a fracture leg while he was playing with nis cousin. basicaly the dream was first my nephew falls down but i get hold of him by pulling his leg back.. few seconds later playing on the terrace my nephew again jumps down but he doesnt gets hurt just a small scartch with bleed.. while i go running dowstairs to check him out.. i could hear my 3 yr old kid crying and coming out from the passage where he fell with bleeding eyes and broken leg and scratches all over his body.. its so disturbing.. actually already an worst incident took place a year ago with both the kids. my nephews index finger tip was chopped off while playing.. we all are always on an high alert when they both are playing. cant sleep as it hurts me deep inside…
kindly help me with it..
Hi Smita,
While I am no longer interpreting individual dreams at this time, this post will help you interpret your dream for yourself:
http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
As you mention, there was real trauma in the past and the dream may be a way of trying to process this, but the dream may also have to do with feelings you had when you were three years old, or perhaps it is a way of dealing with overwhelm and frustration as a parent, where our forbidden feelings of anger and aggression come out as our kids hurt, and us feeling helpless (unconscious and unaware that we are making it up in our minds). Please to consider the post and in any event
Wishing you all the best, asleep and awake :)
thank you bruce
Hello Bruce
I couldnt find solace in your explanations above and was hoping you nay keave some hints to help me wotk out my dream about myself and my son, 25 yesrs, falling of a mountain.
we were both standing looking at th e c astness and beauty of the mountains and i’m not sure what exactly happened but we both fell off the mountain and he fell to way below where my sister was.She tried to help him up but he was faint and fell again. I felt guilty that him falling wS my fault.
I yelled for the people who helped him that he was a bleeder (he has von Willebrands disease) and needed immediate help or he would die, but they ignored that and said they will take the appropriate action afyer the dr has examined him. I felt extremely helpless and very teary when i wokw up from it all.
i am in the middle of being made redundant that could explain some if the dream? My son studies from home. I also raised him on my own.
Hi Sanet,
Thank you for trying to read the other dreams before leaving your dream here. As I have written elsewhere in this blog, you could check out this post for help on self-interpreting your dream:
http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
And as you requested, a hint to get you started: The mountain might symbolize the quest to raise a child, and now that you have made it, it feels “all downhill from here.” I have children in their 20s now and I can relate to the sadness and emptiness that goes along with the honor and profundity of the experience. I’m sorry that your son has a medical condition, but you may be right in wondering if you feel a bit “redundant” and this could drive the unconscious wish for him to need his mother so you could go one with the purpose you have had since he was born.
Mountains are also symbols of higher consciousness, and it might be that you are ready for the next stage of spiritual understanding while your son has to climb his own mountain and learn his own life lessons—hard but important for him, and this puts you into a challenge about what your life is going to be about in the future.
Maybe you will have more dreams to guide you, now that you are in conscious touch with your pain? Maybe you will have to come down to earth, like your sister, and help others, or bond more deeply with your sister, or who knows what new adventure might wait for you.
In any event, wishing you all the best, asleep and awake :)
PS I have noticed that several parents mentioned that reading my parenting book, even though they had grown children, was somehow transformative for them… https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bruce+dolin+privilege+of+parenting&x=0&y=0&ref=nb_sb_noss
Hey Bruce,
I have a dream that i really don’t understand. A dream i have had many times. I dream saving a baby from falling from the bed. The funny thing is that i wake up saving the baby and the reality is my husband i’m grabbing and sometimes he gets up wondering what i’m doing. My children are all grown.
Hi Stella,
While I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, the following post might help you figure this one out for yourself:
http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
PS keep in mind the idea of your “inner baby” (and perhaps the need to put that on your husband now that the kids are grown). My kids are grown now too, so I just baby my dog :)
All Best Wishes, asleep and awake
Hello Bruce,
I had the most terrifying dream I was being haunted by a woman. In my dream I wake up looking for my kids and come across a noise coming from behind some furniture. I break a hidden compartment to find a note saying something like I would pay for not doing something for this woman. Then I run towards the open front door( At the very top of an apartment building) to find my daughter (age 6) at the bottom lifeless. I run down stairs and grab her feeling tremendous pain. I look around and the note is on the floor cut up. Next I’m frantically trying to explain to people around me what happened trying to piece together the note, but their is not longer words on the pieces of paper. Can you interpret this dream or direct me to a similar one?
Hi Isabel,
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All best wishes, asleep and awake :)
I had a dream where my father my youngest brother and myself had gone in search of star fruits out in the Streets and roadside.my father climbed up on a tree which was of almost 150 feet high and plucked very juicy star fruits..
My youngest brother knew it and told my father to help him pluck the fruits of the tree which he liked.my father than asked my youngest brother to come up and pluck the fruits and told him not to worry about plucking those fruit’s as he would help him do that by holding him and letting him pluck the fruits but to that extreme height it was a matter of worry but since my father had said no worry; my brother went into it,but my father couldn’t hold his yougest son and he fell From the top of the tree!! I would love to know the interpretation of the dream!
Hi Jonas,
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All best wishes, asleep and awake :)
My father passed away 2 weeks ago. I just had a dream that I was crossing a bridge with my 2 sons, my mother and brother and husband. Half way over the bridge the water rises and starts to come over the bridge. It was about 20 ft high. My brother, older son, and husband are on one side, my mom and I are on the other. I notice my younger son has washed off the bridge but held on. I was able to rescue him but as we were climbing towards my mom the bridge gave out. I was able to hold on again but the concrete kept breaking. I was dangling with my youngest on my back. I got him up to safety with my mom and as I was pulling myself up someone grabbed my leg and started to pull me down. Again i would get a good grip but the concrete would break. I woke up before seeing the outcome. When the water initially washed up I heard my brother yell there is no way back.
Hi Jenny,
I am so sorry for your loss.
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All best wishes, asleep and awake :)
I’ve just woken up from a some strange, vivid dream.
I was walking into some crammed apartments, small congested corridors and tiny stairs which I didn’t like. There was a nice stranger who was trying to open up on his feelings for me. He seemed sincere and nice. I was drawn to him. As we were walking into the apartments, I got left behind at the entrance then my ex showed up. He was with his mom and small bro. I wanted to ignore them and follow the nice stranger but the small bro insisted I hug him but I refused and ran in. My ex followed me, wanted me to go back and meet his mom but I refused because I didn’t know what to tell her( I was terrified of meeting her that’s why I ignored them at the apartment entrance). We raised our voices while conversing. I walked away from him.
The nice stranger showed up right and asked me what was wrong. Before I could tell him that I wanted some space, a small baby showed up from some nearby apartment and fell through some tiny space in the apartment rails. We tried saving him but his tiny hands couldn’t hold for long so he fell through. We saw people from down stairs trying to save the baby but I don’t know if the baby was saved.
What could this mean?
I also called on my ex while the baby was falling since I had left him on the lower floor, to try and save the baby…
Is this about my childhood, my relationships?
Please help interpret. Thank you
Hi Ebby,
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All best wishes, asleep and awake :)
Hi I gotta a dreem my younger daughter 21month old fell in deep well.
Hi Precilla,
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All best wishes, asleep and awake :)
I had this really vivid scary dream that I tried looking up meanings to, but I think it’s too complex to narrow it down to anything so I saw this website and thought I would share it here to get some more insight on what it means.
I remember standing in the middle of nowhere holding the hand of a little girl whose face I could not see in ankle-deep water with clouds floating around me and no end in sight. I remember looking up and they’re being a floating platform and a little boy standing on the edge of it and i would tell the little girl that only she could catch him, that if she even just touched him she would save him and there being an unspoken rule that I couldn’t save him by catching him or touching him. He would take a step forward and just start falling and the little girl would not touch him or catch him and he’d hit the floor and make a splash and his body would dismember in flesh and this kept happening over and over and over again and I kept begging the little girl to reach out for him and just to touch him and she just wouldn’t and I began to cry and I held her shoulders and I insisted that she needed to catch him and save him but she still wouldn’t do it she wouldn’t reach out or she would just stare at him falling. this happened time and time again until I would look out into the never ending land and just see hundreds of little boys bodies just floating in the shallow water. I think I remember telling her that she was going to heaven and that she needed to save the little boy so he could be her company in heaven because I couldn’t go with her because I was still alive but in the end she never really caught him and I woke up.
Hi Dolly,
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
It’s good that you wrote it all down when it was fresh, and the link above will guide you to self-interpretation.
One hint to get you started: maybe the boys represent the “spirit” part of you, and also the “peter pan” part that may not yet have truly grown up (and “come down to earth”/reality, materiality). The girl is in ankle deep water, as if your undeveloped unconscious (child/feminine/in water-mother, unconscious) is trying to find a way to relate to spirit, but she does not touch the boys; your conscious/ego self is feeling compassion and distress, perhaps calling you to “wake up” to the split within you, the challenge to integrate inner world, spiritual and outer world, material parts of self. Please do follow the link and do the work yourself.
All Best Wishes, asleep and awake :)
Hi, I always have a dream of my 18 month baby girl that someone is cleaning the balcony and there is water and my daughter will slip and fall down and I see my self screaming asking the one whose cleaning to help. But i feel that I’m stuck and I can’t run to help. I had this dream twice and it really scares me. Could you please explain to me what does it mean. Thanks
Hi Hiba,
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
It’s good that you wrote it all down when it was fresh, and the link above will guide you to self-interpretation.
And in any event, wishing you all the best, asleep and awake :)
Hi Bruce I would really like to know what this dream meant because it was strange yet so sad for me. I had a dream that I was with my best friend at this strange place I can’t clearly describe but was filled with spiritual temples about God I believe and we were just walking into all of them exploring as other people were too. We then came across what looked like a stadium where a man was talking to the audience. We sat down on the edge of it and I remember seeing my cousin, he is probably about 7 around there and he is the son of my cousin so I believe he is also my cousin. It’s so weird because I don’t really have contact with him or his little son and that hasn’t been a barrier Im just not close to them I Only see them when I attend family events briefly. In my dream his little son Mathew had a twin and one of them came to us and was also looking around. Since we were sitting pretty high up, he started looking around and looking down from the stadium and I remember just watching him to make sure he didn’t fall. When he peeked down he fell but somehow I was able to catch him by one hand and I started slowly pulling him up. Once I almost got him out he slipped right out of my hands and fell through the hole or edge again and died. I remember in the dream I was so disappointed and devasted that I left immediately and I started running around the area to find comfort in one of the temples. I was crying so much running from place to place breaking down and saying it was my fault that he slipped out of my hands. Then I woke up. I would greatly appreciate your opinion or thoughts on this because I’m really curious based on the setting I was in and everything. Thank you so much!
Hi Carina,
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
It’s good that you wrote it all down when it was fresh, and the link above will guide you to self-interpretation.
And in any event, wishing you all the best, asleep and awake :)
Hi, I’ve had a couple dreams where my daughter almost falls off a bridge, but I save her. All bridges are high up and over trees with some kind of cliffs and streams. Today while napping I got out of the car on a bridge in the clouds to look at the sky while telling someone to keep driving the car across because it had a flat tire. For some reason I was holding onto to rope and got to the end of the bridge. my daughter 7 was right there saying mommy don’t do that to me again. She then was standing close to the edge and I told her to back away. It was really windy. She backed away but then when I turned around she was at a different part of the edge that had stairs and I told her to get from the edge again. She said ok and jumped to catch the railing by the stairs and fell through. She screamed as she fell and was carried off by the wind. I woke up with chills. We have two upcoming flights, I hope this doesn’t mean we are going to crash.
Hi Kristina,
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All Best Wishes, asleep and awake :)
I just had a dream last night that my baby flew out the window.
He wanted to. He’s 1 year old. He wanted to see what’s out there. I waited for him to come home through the window like what happened in peter pan. But he hasn’t come home yet. I see my siblings carrying their babies and I feel this sense of longing for my child. Then at night he returns home, I was so happy but I was now thinking of ways to not let him out because he might get lost and not find his way home. At first I thought of tying his leg with a strap so that I can pull him back when he tries to fly. Then I realized “no”, because what if he somehow still escapes with a strap in his leg?? Hi may get tangled up in the trees or something and it may cause more harm than good. So then I found a solution. I closed all the curtains so that my son will not be tempted to fly away when he doesn’t see the beautiful view outside.
Hi Adrienne,
Although I am not interpreting individual dreams at this time, Please see: http://privilegeofparenting.com/2016/09/23/what-our-nightmares-about-our-children-could-mean/
All Best Wishes, asleep and awake :)