Bedtime Helpers

My son, Jackson, is five years old, and he has a phenomenal imagination.  To the point of excess.  Because I am in a position to allow him, in part by virtue of homeschooling, he daydreams typically for 2 or 3 hours a day, sometimes more.  Much of this occurs as he is waking up, eating, riding in the car, or lying in bed, waiting for sleep.

Before bedtimes, we've evolved many practices to help him adjust to a resting state.  Story time is still a major part of this, and for much of the past two years, so has been Happy Thought.  Happy Thought began initially as a means of warding off bad dreams, caused by negative images and experiences Jackson had had, including things from kids being mean or rude to episodes of Scooby Doo watched in the kid's club at the gym.  It was a highlight reel of the day's events, capped by a rough outline of the expectations for the next day. Eventually, HTs became more (by demand) a full re-cap of the day, including even unpleasant encounters just as much as pleasant ones. However, Jackson has become so adept at getting himself to sleep, he has been asking for no more Happy Thought.  HT absence periods have happened before, so I don't know if this is permanent, but he tells me it is.  He feels he has advanced beyond them.

His daydreams feel every bit as potent to him as sleeping dreams, every bit as rich and as real, and ordinarily, he has great control over them.  He has adapted over the past 5 and a half years to where he can readily transition in and out of dreams to answer questions, eat another bite of food, or ask a question to clarify some point that will help him in his dream scenario, e.g. "Why does Ariel's dad yell at her?" or "Why did Dorothy kill the Wicked Witch of the West?"  Then he slips right back into whatever story he was reliving or concocting.

Yet for all that he is maturing, bad dreams do occur...often while he is still awake.  Recently, he has been asking for help again with dream modulation.  Sometimes I have given him images of flying through the sky on bubbles, through rainbows and waterfalls.  Sometimes I have had him swim with dolphins through underground caves.  But I felt he needed a new tool, so last week, I gave him a dream turtle.  The idea came to me, admittedly, from looking at the star-shaped lights on the ceiling, coming out the back of a battery-powered light-up turtle that he uses as a sleep aid.  (Honestly, my husband loves that thing even more than Jackson does.)  So I used my right hand to rub the back of my left hand and let him try it on his own hand.  I said this was a dream turtle.  If you rub it during a dream, magic sparkles of gold will shoot out and make prismatic rainbows all across the sky, changing anything unpleasant into something more desirable.  When Jackson expressed concern about losing the dream turtle, I supplied him with an imaginary pocket on his right side.

Contented, Jackson has enjoyed his dream turtle and used it frequently.  He's told me how helpful it's been, having a dream turtle.  But tonight, it wasn't enough.  I dusted his dream turtle.  I gave it food.  But still, it wasn't doing the trick.  He couldn't get the right person in his dream.  So I said I had what he needed.  But I would only loan it to him; he would need to return it to me tomorrow.

"I have a whale,"  I said.  "It's a baby one.  It has a lot of blubber to help it stay warm in the coldest of ocean depths."

"So, that means it's really well protected?  It can defend itself?" Jackson wondered.

"Yes, and it heals really well, too, so even if it gets attacked by a shark or a T. Rex, as long as it gets away, it can heal up and get all better again.

"It's a kind of Peter Pan whale," I continued.  "My baby whale lives in a place like Neverland, so it never has to grow up.  It can always stay young and small.  And it's very smooth on the outside.  Sometimes," I giggled, "he lets me stand on his blowhole, and he'll spray a bunch of water."

"So then you fly up in the air a long ways?!"  Jackson was getting the hang of it.

"Yes, and then I splash down again.  Then I swim back to my whale or sometimes he swims over to get me."

"What else?"  Oof.  I wasn't being let off that easily.

"Well, I have a secret to tell you, but you can't tell anyone."

"Why not?"

"Because then they'd all want my baby whale for their own!"

"Okay."

"My baby whale," I whispered, "can fly!  Do you remember the whales from Fantasia 2000?"

"Yeah."

"My baby whale, he's a humpback whale just like them, and he can fly just like them, too.  But it's a secret.  Sometimes, if I have my space suit with me, I ride on his back, and we fly together up to the edge of space.  We like to just sit there, above the clouds, and look at the stars.  And then some days we fly all around and make shapes out of the clouds so people will see them and try to figure out what they are...only they don't know my whale and I made them."

"Like what?"

"Well, sometimes we make shapes like cats, or tables, or peanut butter sandwiches."  Admittedly, I could have come up with better shapes.

"Then what?"

"We are really careful so people don't see us, and then we head back down.  My whale likes to do tricks in the air, too, so sometimes he does loops.  And he loves to do freefalls where we just fall straight down for a while."  Here I made a sound like my face was being blown all around by wind.

"Do you hold on?"

"I have to!  Otherwise I'd fall off.  And sometimes I do, because my whale is really slippery and usually wet, but he catches me if I slide off.  Then we go back into the water.  He's very gentle about that, surprisingly."

"Mom...I might forget to give your whale back tomorrow."

"I'll have to try to remind you then."

And then I left, daydreaming recommenced, and now, at last, he is asleep.

Mission: Accomplished.

And in case you need to borrow my baby whale, remember:  he likes to sleep on your left side.