Sweet Dreams

Have you ever wondered at what age children start dreaming? Every once in a while Hayden will wake up in the morning and make a comment about something completely random that leads me to believe he has had a dream about the said subject. He doesn't have a concept of dreams so it does no good to ask him what he dreamed about. This morning Hayden woke up about 6:00 and climbed into bed with me. Around 7:30 I was awake but Hayden had his arm linked through mine so I was not able to get out of bed with out waking him up. A little bit later he began talking in his sleep. He said, "I don't want to go down the slide." I guess I can positively say that Hayden has dreams.

I looked up on the Internet as to when dreams begin. Dreams occur during REM sleep. Studies have been done on brain waves to record when dreams occur. I found out that more dreams occur in the first two weeks of life than any other time and decrease as a child develops. By age three a child dreams as much as an adult (20% of their sleep).