Table of contents:
- Does a baby dream from birth?
- What are the stages of dreams experienced by babies during sleep?
- Is it true that babies can have nightmares?
Nothing is more beautiful for a parent than to see her baby sleeping comfortably. Especially when your little one occasionally smiles while sleeping, it feels like she wants to know what she is dreaming of at that time. Have you ever wondered, do babies dream like adults? What do babies dream about? Come on, find out through the following full review.
Does a baby dream from birth?
You certainly will never know what babies dream of starting from birth. Although you often see newborns smile while sleeping, the fact is that babies haven't experienced the dream phase in the first two weeks of being born.
In fact, dreams are a reflection of what we see and think on a daily basis. Well, babies certainly haven't experienced as much interaction with their surroundings as adults. As a result, they don't have any images to send to their brains and turn them into dreams.
According to experts, babies begin to dream actively from the age of two weeks. Jodi Mindell, Ph.D., Head of Sleep Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia told Parenting that when babies begin to dream, what appears in the dream is just a collection of images or events without dialogue. This is because babies do not know language like adults, so their dreams are most likely silent without sound.
What are the stages of dreams experienced by babies during sleep?
Just like adults, babies also experience a sleep phase, namely REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM. The difference is, newborn babies can spend half of their sleep time in the REM phase. Meanwhile, adults only spend a quarter of their sleep time in the REM phase and the rest more in the non-REM phase.
REM phase is the stage of sleep when a person reaches deep sleep, easily awakens, and dreams. In infants, this phase is usually characterized by sudden throbbing of the eyelids or a twitching of the body. These signs indicate that the brain is doing a scan while the baby is dreaming.
Uniquely, baby dreams are not the same as adult dreams. The reason is, what appears in a baby's dream is only a series of silent images that they managed to record the moment literate or awake. For example, the atmosphere in the room, toys, to the faces of his parents, but without dialogue - aka without a sound.
However, the REM sleep phase can help strengthen the baby's memory of the things around him. As a baby literate or awake during the day, your little one is trying to absorb all the information that is around him and make him learn many things. So, your little one's brain is not sleeping at all even though he himself is sleeping.
Is it true that babies can have nightmares?
Now you know that babies dream from two weeks of age, even though the dream contains only a collection of pictures without sound. Now, what about nightmares? Can babies have nightmares?
If you see your little one suddenly scream or fidget in the middle of the night while sleeping, this doesn't actually mean your baby is having a nightmare. The reason is, babies cannot recognize fear due to bad things. So, it is impossible for babies to feel scared because of nightmares because they don't even know what fear looks like.
The baby may be restless because of discomfort. Either the room temperature is too cold or too hot, he feels hungry, or he is in a bad position.
Starting from 2 to 3 years of age, children are just beginning to be able to distinguish between happiness and fear. This is what makes children feel scared and lead to nightmares.
Therefore, there is no need to rush into panic if the baby suddenly screams while sleeping. Your baby will calm down - without even waking up at all - on his own after a few minutes. So, you don't need to try to comfort him, because this will actually make him wake up and literate longer in the middle of the night.
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