Chat With a Brilliant Human: Dreams vs Reality

It’s been a while since I’ve shared conversational gold from Angel Boy 2.0.

He’s now reached five whole years around the sun; 1825 days.

When we were chatting about Daddy’s 40th birthday, he wanted to tell me something but it was too overwhelming for him to share, so he asked mom to do it,

“YOU tell her.”

Sweet child. When he woke up that morning extra EARLY, he ran into mom and dad’s room and asked if it was too early to go down to the Grandma room and wake me up.

Mom said, “But Grandma’s not here, T.”

Emphatically, he said, “But you told me she would be here when I woke up!”

He was quite distraught.

Apparently he had been dreaming about seeing me and his dream was detailed and VERY REAL.

Like all lucid dreams, it takes a minute or two to separate what is real from what is speaking to us from our subconscious, even more difficult when you’re a little one.

For children, dreams can feel incredibly real. It’s a challenge for them to distinguish between what’s imagined and things that actually happened. Even if they can understand that the content of a dream was imaginary, the emotions felt during a dream are all very real.

“It was a dream, T, and sometimes a dream can seem very real.”

“What do you mean she’s not here! You TOLD ME!“

And then he ran downstairs to check and sure enough, the Grandma room was still Daddy’s home office.

He was genuinely sad to learn it was just a dream and I wasn’t there.

I’m sad, too, but our bonds of love are very strong and that makes me the luckiest Grandma in the world.