Recently, I was asked if I wanted to participate in fun little book shower involving The Double-Daring Book for Girls, by Andrea Buchanan & Miriam Peskowitz. I’d wanted to check out this book, so I jumped at the chance. After it arrived, I was flipping through it and I really enjoyed seeing the variety of daring things to learn and explore in this book. I wish I would have had a book like this years ago when I was a daring girl, and I can’t wait to pass it down to my daughter!
Do you know a daring girl or are you one? Check out the book yourself!
The book shower concept was to have involved me and my daughter, and admittedly, she’s a bit too young for the book. But, I knew that we’d find something we could try in the book, something that would be a connection for both of us. Something daring.
And, then I saw it:
Dreams.
Dreams have always been a fascination of mine, and they’re something that I talk to Claire about all the time. I still write down my really vivid dreams, just as I started to do years ago in my old journal. A year ago, after we’d lost power one evening, Claire asked me if her dreams ran on batteries or needed electricity to exist. And, just a month ago, she asked me if she could watch the dream she’d had the night before on YouTube.
We always talk about our dreams, but I’d never thought about helping her write hers down…
…until now.
Starting on page 135, the book talks about dreams, and how to make a dream journal and a dream catcher and it even talks about some common dreams people have and their meanings.
Dreaming about losing your teeth? It’s in there.
Dreaming about flying? It’s in there, too.
Dreaming about showing up to a test naked? You guessed it. It’s in there.
I have more in depth dream analysis books in my personal library, but the list in the book was a good start.
It had never occurred to me to start a dream journal for someone so young, but why not? A 3-year old’s dreams are just as important as a 13-year old’s dreams, a 23-year old’s dreams, or even a 35-year old’s dreams. In fact, I don’t think you’re too young or too old to talk about your dreams. No, she won’t dream about showing up to her high school naked, but I was curious to see what her brain would focus on. Like I said, I always ask Claire how she slept and we talk about her dreams, but this was an excuse to get a little deeper.
So, I started writing down her dreams, and when she’s older, I’ll encourage her to record them herself.
Here are some of her dreams over the past five days (in her words):
- One night, she dreamt about “flowers, doors, curtains and sparkly shoes.”
- The next night, she dreamt about “picking shells” with her aunt on the beach in California.
- The night after that, she dreamt about “fish and starfish.”
- The next night, she dreamt about “the new pink raspberry shampoo” I bought for her.
The recaps of those dreams were pretty short and sweet. She didn’t elaborate any more than that when pressed for more information. They were pretty straight-forward and pretty easy to see the sources.
But, last night’s dream was more vivid. She got really excited and animated when talking about it. This is what she said:
- “I watched a movie in my eyes. It was called ‘Squidder Oxy Dive.’ Puppy thought two of the squidders were dead, but they weren’t. Puppy wouldn’t let me watch his scary show.”
I love that she describes her dreams like “movies in her eyes.” This reinforces why she asked if we could find her dreams on YouTube. When I asked her what a squidder was, she said it was like the little submarine in the movie “Dive Olly Dive,” but it wasn’t. It was an animal. “Dive Olly Dive” is a DVD we watched a few days ago. We’re going to review that one, so I asked her more questions about that than I normally do when we watch a DVD. Maybe that’s why “Dive” is in the title of the DVD in her dream? Puppy tends to disagree with Claire quite a bit, so that’s nothing new. And, we won’t let her watch “scary” shows, so that’s probably where that came from.
Still, it’s amazing to me how the mind works.
When Claire is a little older, I’m going to help her make a dream journal and a dream catcher. (There are directions for both described in The Double-Daring Book for Girls.) In the meantime, I will continue asking her what she dreamt the night before, and I’ll write down the more vivid ones. I may even have her start her own Book of Dreams that involves her coloring pictures to describe them.
What about you? I dare you to share your dreams in the comments. No, scratch that…
I double-dare you!
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