A new study commissioned by the LEGO Group reveals that children can learn how to guide and change their dreams.
The findings have inspired a mission to educate parents and carers on how they can help their children develop and strengthen the real-world skills needed to be able to guide their dreams – or as coined in the LEGO DREAMZzz series, “dream craft”.
But although real-world children are also able to guide and control their dreams like the characters in the show, the global study found that only around half (48 per cent) of Australian children aged six to 12 are aware of their own abilities.
Of those who are utilising their “dream crafting” powers, almost half (47 per cent) of Aussie kids say they are able to consciously change their dream when it’s turning into something they fear, and 41 per cent guide their dream if they simply don’t like what they are dreaming of.
Dream psychologist Ian Wallace has analysed more than 400,000 dreams across his 30 years of research, explains that children can guide their dreams by using a plethora of skills developed in the real world. This can be done by tapping into their creativity and confidence more, particularly through three methods:
- Dream play involves exploring and analysing an image from a dream, preferably as the child is waking. This is done by re-imagining the dream in various scenarios. As the child does this, they will realise that they have power over the images that they are creating in their mind and can explore different ways of how they feel about those images.
- ImaginalpPlay focuses on the child playing around with a remembered image from a dream once they’ve awoken. As a parent, you can encourage the child to imagine various aspects of a scene in their dream, such as its surroundings, inhabitants and possible elements within it.
- Active play takes this further by inviting the child to reconstruct and enact imagery from their dreams, using creativity to build comparisons and resemblances through role play. This hands-on approach deepens emotional connections and strengthens their imaginative skills, which shows kids how their creativity can guide their dreams into whatever they want.
Enhancing children’s creativity and confidence
According to Wallace, these methods enhance children’s creativity and confidence by encouraging them to experiment, play and explore using their imagination. In turn, these real-life skills can then be subconsciously applied when asleep to help the child guide or change their dream.
Through his years of research, Wallace has uncovered that the ability to “dream craft” not only makes dreaming more exciting and enjoyable but also has a whole host of other real-life benefits for children. When asleep, a child’s imagination allows them to develop their problem-solving abilities, and explore their inner thoughts and feelings, which builds a stronger sense of self-identity and emotional resilience and even improves their brain health by advancing their complex cognitive skills.
So, what are Aussie kids crafting in their dreams? The study found the top ten most common things:
- Friends (70 per cent)
- Family members (66 per cent)
- School (64 per cent)
- Parents/ Guardians (62 per cent)
- Toys (53 per cent)
- Playing a game (52 per cent)
- Monsters (48 per cent)
- Being chased (46 per cent)
- Beaches (45 per cent)
- Wild animals (40 per cent)
Local dream analyst Jane Teresa Anderson interprets what some of these dreams might mean for Aussie children.
- Dreams about friends, family members, and parents/guardians can help children to explore their emotions around relationships, and test out different ways of relating in the safety of the dream space. They also help children to figure out their values.
- Every dream is crafted from the individual’s store of experiences and personal symbols. A child might dream of a monster when they’re scared or fearful. The monster might symbolise something that feels hugely scary, like angry feelings (that they try to hide) or feeling bad/guilty about something. On the other hand, a child who loves stories and TV shows about monsters might dream of them when they’re facing a situation they want to overcome. Monster dreams might help children practise becoming heroes. Other children might dream of a friendly monster: they might be using their dreams to find the beauty in daily life’s ‘beasts’.
Dreaming helps improve information retention
Anderson told EducationDaily the concept of dream crafting can have positive impacts on learning and retaining information too.
“Research at Harvard Medical School shows that dreaming helps people to retain learned information,” she says.
“In the study, 99 people were trained to navigate a virtual maze for 45 minutes. Half the group then stayed awake for two hours, continuing to rehearse the maze, while the other half of the group slept for two hours. A two-hour sleep is long enough to include a period of dreaming. Later in the day, both groups were tested on the maze.
“Those who slept performed better on the maze, and those who remembered dreaming about mazes, performed on average, six times better than those who had remained awake. Dreaming helps us to make connections and associations that help consolidate memories and learning.”
Processing emotions and experiences
As well as helping us to lay down memories and consolidate new learning, Anderson says dreams help
us to process our emotions and experiences and find creative solutions to problems and puzzles.
“When we ‘sleep on it’, we’re more likely to wake up with a solution to a problem that had seemed impossible before,” she told EducationDaily.
“History abounds with famous examples; Kekulé was a chemist trying to work out the molecular structure of benzene. In 1865 he dreamed of a snake with its tail in its mouth. The snake’s body formed a perfect circle. Upon waking, Kekulé realised the structure of benzene was a closed ring, not a ‘string’ with two ends, as he had pictured.”
Anderson says that, in the lives of young children, dreaming helps fuel imagination.
“Imaginative play and dream crafting builds creativity and helps children look at life from different perspectives,” she told EducationDaily.
“They might role play and imagine experiencing life from the point of view of a monster, a parent, a ghost– all of which help the child build empathy and understanding. It also helps children enlarge their worldview and to problem-solve, so that they meet life’s challenges with an expectation of success.: