After bed time, our upstairs is illuminated only by the nightlight in our daughters’ bathroom.  The dull hum of an air purifier or a fan keeps us entranced in our dreams.  I’m reliving a video conference for the 16th time that night.  For some reason my dreams are on “repeat”  and I can’t shake them out of the rut.  Suddenly, the silence is broken by the sobs of Butterfly (four-and-a-half) at our door.  Kelley is the first to notice and immediately fears that Ladybug has passed a faint stomach virus on to her sister.  I awake to Kelley shouting orders about trashcans and toilets and other stuff that I can’t decipher.  (I’m not very coherent when I first wake up.) I sit-up at the edge of the bed as Butterfly walks into the room.

“What’s wrong, baby?”
“I had a bad dream.” She informs me through the tears that are rolling down her cheeks.  Kelley breathes a sigh of relief and I gather Butterfly in my arms.

We don’t have these often, but on occasion, Butterfly will encounter something scary in her dreams.  There are probably ways that you’re supposed to handle this type of thing.  Perhaps you’re supposed to explain to your child the difference between dreams and reality and expect them to move past it.  Perhaps you’re supposed to send them back to bed and hope they find a way around it.  When the scary monsters find their way into our house, I take a different approach.

“A dragon ate me.  There was a whole family of big, mean dragons and they were scary.”
“Oh my, that does sound scary.  But you know what you do with dragons, don’t you?”
“No….”
“You yell at them, ‘Hey, stop for a second.  You can eat me, but I want to take a picture first.’ And then the mommy dragon will have to go put on her makeup and she’ll make the little dragons swim in the river to get clean.  Daddy dragon will polish his horns and when they’re all ready, you take their picture.”
“Why do I take their picture?”
“Because when you’re done, you tell those dragons ‘OK, you can eat me now.’  But they’ll want to see the picture first, so you’ll have to take the camera and put the pictures on your computer and then print them a really big picture, and take it back to the dragons.  They’ll like it so much that they’ll invite you over to the dragon feast the next weekend to take pictures of all their friends.  And that’s something special because no one has ever been to a dragon feast!”

dragonMy tale weaves on for a few minutes and ends with Butterfly having a new dragon friend that can fly her anywhere she wants to go.  As I close my tale, I end with “And remember, when those dragons try to eat you, you tell them that you want to take their picture.  And the next thing you know, you’ll have a new friend.”

She is pleased with this outcome and flashes a small, tired smile as she lays her head upon the pillow.  “Daddy, you’re silly.” And she closes her eyes in hopes of trying her new tactic to make a mythical friend.

Work was tough, classes are occupying time, bills need to be paid, and my dreams offer no rest.  But tonight, while the rest of the city slept, I tamed the dragons that haunted my daughter.