My Happy Place: A Soothing Guided Practice for Children at Bedtime

I felt like I had struck gold again tonight. My daughter had three nightmares last night which culminated in her sleeping in our bed. Tonight, she was scared it would happen again. So, I adapted a great little guided practice I do with adults for her — and she was fast asleep before I finished. Here it is. Let me know if you give it a go with your children!  By the way you can change any words to suit your children better — just make sure the questions you ask are not promoting them to think of any particular place you would like them to love — leave the choice up to them. And just use a slow, warm and gentle voice, giving them enough time to bring the place to life in their mind before you move on to the next section: As you lie down to sleep, snuggle down into the bed and find a cozy, comfortable place to rest.  Imagine that you can see a bookshelf with three of four books on it — it’s your own special bookshelf and you can go to it anytime you want to. You are going to take one of the books down now. Choose any one and open it up on your lap. When you open the book in your imagination, you see before you a place that you love to go to — somewhere that makes you happy just to think about it  It’s one of your favorite places to be — maybe it’s a park or playground that you love, maybe a beach, a lake, a forest or somewhere else again that you are thinking of now. It might be somewhere you were today that you loved, ...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Children and Teens LifeHelper Mindfulness Parenting Personal Self-Help Sleep Bedtime Night Terrors Nightmare Relaxation Visualization Source Type: blogs