Coaching practices for How Do You Help a Child with Nightmares

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How Do You Help a Child with Nightmares, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• Something scared my child
• There’s one specific scene from when I was small that I can still feel in my body, and part of me wishes I could step back into that moment and do for that kid what nobody did
• The storm has finally passed and my kid is calm again, and I keep wanting to either just move on or fix the situation for them
• Every conversation with my kid about their behavior turns into me laying down the law and them digging in, and I want a way to actually talk it through together
• By bedtime I’m already dreading another bad night, and the harder I try to force myself to sleep

Practices that may help

1. Name it to tame it: tell the story of the big feeling
   Help the child narrate what happened and how it felt — storytelling is brain integration.
   The Whole-Brain Child (Siegel & Bryson)
2. Imagery rescripting for schema memories
   Revisit a difficult childhood memory in imagination and rewrite it so the child’s needs are met.
   Schema Therapy: Healing Early Maladaptive Beliefs
3. Problem-solve together once the child is calm
   After the emotional storm passes, invite the child to find a solution with you.
   Emotion Coaching (John Gottman)
4. Use Plan B: the three-step collaborative conversation
   Empathize with the child’s concern, share yours, and invite them to solve it together.
   Collaborative Problem Solving (Ross Greene)
5. Break the anxiety-about-sleep loop
   Interrupt the cycle where worrying about not sleeping becomes the main reason you can not sleep.
   Stimulus Control for Sleep
6. Listen empathically and validate the feeling
   Reflect the emotion you see accurately before you do anything else.
   Emotion Coaching (John Gottman)
7. The Pre-Sleep Worry Buffer
   Use a 10-minute afternoon or early evening worry review to protect sleep from nighttime rumination.
   Worry Time: Containing Anxiety With Scheduled Worry
8. Use paradoxical intention for anxiety and anticipatory fear
   Intentionally wish for what you fear — not to encourage it but to dissolve the anticipatory dread that amplifies it.
   Logotherapy
9. Schedule a worry time earlier in the day
   Contain bedtime worry by giving anxious thoughts a specific earlier window, then postponing them at night.
   CBT for Insomnia (CBT-I), Made Practical
10. Build each child’s personalized regulation toolbox
    Each child needs their own set of tools matched to each zone.
    Zones of Regulation (Leah Kuypers)

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