Since I like to bring a sense of balance to my blog, I often find myself teetering precariously between posts about horrible admissions of guilt or embarrassment and exciting eureka moments.
So obviously, after the Third Nipple Incident, I owe you something great.
Unfortunately, I have nothing great. But a marginally good idea of something fun to do with your kid, maybe.
And so, I recommend to you: The Dream Project.
Since she could barely talk, Ali has enjoyed telling me about her dreams. And I have had an undying fascination in hearing them, dissecting what she’s saying and picking out familiar common threads that I experience in my own dreams. Themes such as having something in one’s hand and it disappearing, being stuck and not being able to walk or run, flying and other forms of supernatural transportation, being in one’s house but one’s house being a very strange place, and needing to pee, peeing, but still needing to pee.
And, after her recounting of the following particularly entertaining nightmare,
“I dreamed that Miss Laura’s Mommy didn’t have a head and she kept hugging me and wouldn’t stop hugging me and I told her to stop hugging me but she didn’t because she couldn’t hear me because she didn’t have ears because she didn’t have a head!!”
I decided that I needed to record some of these stories – if nothing else, for her own viewing pleasure when she gets older.
So I left my video camera on my dresser for a week. Every morning, I asked Ali what she dreamed about, and she kindly let me record her monologue. Some of the videos are poor quality because she didn’t wait until the lights were on to tell me her dreams. Also, I hope you enjoy the benefit of seeing exactly HOW cluttery we leave our (and especially her) bedroom.
The first conclusion from this experiment is obviously that we watch too many Disney movies.
Second, we don’t change out pajamas very often.
But besides that, I would like to do this once a year, keep all the videos saved together, and then be able to really geek out at analyzing how her subconscious changes over time. Because geeking out over your kid is what motherhood is all about, right?
This is such an awesome idea!!
Obviously, because of the geeking out over her subconscious changes AND because she will probably love seeing this when she’s older, but it also shows so many developmental stages (mentally, emotionally, verbally, and physically)!
I hope by the time I have talking children (i.e. more than just mamma, dadda, baw (ball), up, and dat (that)), I will have a video camera to do the same kind of thing!
Thanks for the idea!
Thanks! Yes, I wish I’d started doing it once a year when she first started telling me about her dreams two years ago – I’d love to see the changes already!!
And for a video camera, I highly recommend the Flip Cameras. They’re very inexpensive, HD quality, tiny and portable, easy to load onto the computer (they have a pop-out USB drive), and are really durable. Much better than the old fashioned video cameras!
“I don’t know. Bad guys don’t tell you what their names are.” Oh how funny! She’s adorable!
I think that was my favorite line in all of the videos!!
What a cool idea! And such variety in her little subconscious! =)
“Bad guy don’t tell you what their names are.” is such a profound statement.
Her horse dream had even me scared. She was certainly troubled about that dream.
Agreed – being eaten by a horse is never a pleasant experience. Or so I’ve heard…
That is great that she is so detailed about her dreams! K rarely tells me about her dreams and it is usually very vague like, “there was a monkey”. She’s not really a talker when it comes to stuff like that. Whenever I ask her how school was she says, “fine” and if I ask what she learned she says, “I don’t remember”. I wonder if that is a personality thing?
I don’t know! I know for Ali it took practice… she would tell me a little, and them more we’ve talked about it, the more detailed she’s gotten.
I agree that if you keep asking, they’ll give you more detail. I find that to be true of both of my older children in many situations. We did the Gold Rush VBS at our church – was that the theme at SMI this year, or did she get the shirt from somewhere else? Also, even though Ali is much more educated than my 4-almost-5 year old, I love that the way the describe things is so similar. Very good idea!
Yes, we did Gold Rush this year too! It was Ali’s first VBS and she LOVED it – she’s actually been asking me this week why we only do VBS in the summer!
I have always had crazy dreams, and I love to hear kids dreams : )
I could totally see a Toy Story 4 like Ali describes in her dream, I thought the 3rd one had some really scary & disturbing parts!
This makes me want to start asking Luke about his dreams, he’s never mentioned them.