Dreamcatching : Every Parent's Guide to Exploring and Understanding Children's Dreams and Nightmares (Paperback)

~ Kelly Bulkeley (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Dreamcatching, by Alan Siegel, clinical psychologist (Dreams That Can Change Your Life), and Kelly Bulkeley, dream researcher (The Wilderness of Dreams), is for parents who are interested in finding out what their children dream about. Through dreams, parents may gain a deeper understanding of what a child is thinking, feeling, and needing. (A child, for instance, with recurrent dreams of being naked in public may be feeling self-conscious and may require special sensitivity when she's in a public situation.) Siegel and Bulkeley have suggestions for helping even very young children remember their dreams and for gaining insight into a child's dreams and nightmares by relating them to the child's waking experiences. They discuss common dream themes and ways to talk with your child about their dreams (don't over analyze, at least in front of them). They also provide an approach to nightmares: "Nightmares are more often like a vaccine than a poison ... a minute dose of a disease that mobilizes our antibodies and makes us more resistant to the virulence of the disease." Siegel and Bulkeley believe that your response can break the cycle of nightmares. Wonderful dreams from real children throughout the book enhance its worth.

From Booklist

Discussing dreams is an unusual but effective means of creative and emotional contact with children. Ranging from expressing dream images through writing and art to soothing fears to finding solutions to problems, dream-work techniques afford opportunities to connect and to guide development and well-being very personally. Siegel and Bulkeley teach parents about common themes in children's dreams according to age, remedies for nightmares, dreaming in response to family crises or change, and themes of transcendence and spirituality in dreams. They illustrate each topic with dozens of actual dreams--some brief, some elaborate, all fascinating as means of describing, clarifying, or explaining the concerns of an individual child. The book also offers a teacher's guide to creative dream work in the classroom, an annotated bibliography of children's books addressing dreams and dreaming, and instructions on compiling a "dreamcatcher" workbook. Many parents may welcome this insightful approach to sharing and understanding one of life's universal experiences with their children. Kathryn Carpenter

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Product Details

• Paperback: 290 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; 1st THUS edition (January 12, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517887886
• ISBN-13: 978-0517887882
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #374,611 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book Greatly Needed by Parents, Children, and Teachers, August 20, 2007

By	Evelyn M. Duesbury (Platteville, WI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Parents,teachers and school counselors need this excellent book for work with children's dreams. The authors are parents, counselors, and teachers. They KNOW what they are talking about! Let's increase the numbers of this valuable, experienced-based insightful book on the book shelves of homes and schools.