Baby

[meandyou]

Does anyone know if at 14 months old babies can have nightmares?

[andy hughes]

Without the sophisticated vocabulary required, babies are poor at expressing their needs and experiences, except through crying. Contrary to old wives' tales, babies do not cry "to exercise their lungs", they cry for a reason. If you have eliminated the usual reasons, hunger, hot / cold, lost dummy, it may be that baby is lonely or even just bored. The answer is contact with a parent - babies recognise their parents by smell as well as sight, so if you think baby is fretting at night, tuck a garment into the cot that has your own personal smell on it - something you've worn that day will be fine. If baby still wakes distressed from sleep, a comforting rock and a cuddle will usually reassure baby that you are not far away, and eventually sleep patterns will settle.

[incitatus]

It is an area which no one knows much about. The infant mind is still forming, and no-one is quite sure of how much of the normal mental furniture (ego, id, whatever else you want to call them) is in place. Without this framework it is difficult to imagine nightmares.

[vittoria]

From personal experience, my guess is that they can.

[TaraLynn]

as people get older they are able the put an object or person to something they are thinking. If we have a nightmare, we usually dream or some sort of event with people or things. Babies, who have not yet been able to put people and things into their nightmare still have nightmares, however they do not experience a frightening event. What they experience is more like a feeling. They have a feeling of something being scary and dangerous, because these are feelings every mind have.

[meandyou]

My doctor told me that young children do have something similar to nightmares called night terrors, and they usually grow out of them.