Bedtime Conversation
Gleek has been having bad dreams lately. Lots of them. They cause her to call out in the night and snuggle in bed with Howard because that makes her feel safe. I’ve tried talking to her about the dreams in the morning, but that doesn’t work. In the mornings she has escaped the night’s dreams and doesn’t want to go back there. This means that the best time to talk about her dreams is before bed. This is when she is faced with a long dark night ahead and wants to do anything to keep me from leaving her. This means that she’ll discuss her dreams quite thoroughly. Unfortunately I’m usually trying to hustle multiple kids into bed and so I don’t stay to listen.
Tonight I decided to listen to Gleek for however long she needed. I had no idea how much she needed to talk. She prattled on for more than an hour with me sitting and listening. First she talked about the dreams themselves which were primarily composed of pieces of movies that she had seen. Then she lamented the fact that all movies have scary parts in them. Then she tried to convince me to let her watch a couple of movies before she went to bed because she was used to those movies and they wouldn’t scare her. She described exactly which parts of the movies she liked and why. After that we segued into her telling me that she is never ever going to play with her best friend again. She is filled with anger for this Bestfriend. Only, when I mentioned that Bestfriend was sick, Gleek was ready to write a cheerful note and mail it so that Bestfriend wouldn’t be sad. We discussed the depth of her anger for Bestfriend, but Gleek could not explain why she was angry, only that she was. Then Gleek began to talk about how a boy at school had punched her in the stomach. I got all the details on that one, including reactions from the teacher. A female classmate was mentioned with a smile. Gleek described how she taught Classmate to climb down from the jungle gym. Classmate is obviously special to Gleek. That is when it came out that Gleek had made friends with Classmate and then Bestfriend had too. Gleek worried that Classmate would go off to be friends with Bestfriend and leave Gleek alone. Gleek made a whole plan where she could have Classmate to herself. But then that left Bestfriend without anyone and Gleek didn’t want Bestfriend to be sad, so she decided that Bestfriend could have Othergirl.
We talked around this triangle for a long time. I tried to plant the idea that it was possible for Classmate to have more than one friend, but I’m not sure that the idea took root. There were additional digressions to explain why Gleek threw a crayon at Annoyingboy and how she likes having a first grader desk all to herself because now she doesn’t have to sit at a table with people who annoy her.
Eventually she was winding down. I could tell that she could continue talking, but that the need to unload was much less. I asked her to lie down quietly while I went to tuck Link into bed. I promised to come back to talk to her some more as soon as I was done. I did come back, but by then she was so peacefully sleepy that she didn’t feel like talking. I bet she has better dreams tonight.
I need to take time to listen to her at bedtime. She doesn’t talk about this stuff during the day and it has to vent somewhere. My other kids could benefit from talking time too. It is hard for me to be a good listener when what I really want to do is shove them all into bed and go be with Howard. But they need it, so I need to do it.