Good Housekeeping: How to calm your kids' fears

By BETH BROPHY
GOOD HOUSEKEEPING

Planes crashing into skyscrapers. Angry men making nasty threats. Frightened women and children fleeing their country. The images that have been flashing across our TV screens since September 11 are disturbing to us all. For children, who are not only exposed to the trauma on television but also pick up the anxiety of their parents, nighttime is especially fraught now. Bad dreams — and more distressing ones — seem to be on the rise.

At first, you may not know exactly what's troubling your child, says Jodi Mindell, Ph.D., associate director of the Sleep Disorder Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, because the images in nightmares are not always literal representations. "Kids may report dreaming about monsters, not burning buildings," she says. You do know, however, that they are frightened, as their little hands shake you or their cries wake you in the night.

To head off bad dreams — whatever their origins — you need to start well before bedtime.

• Turn off the news when kids are around. And limit their exposure to frightening movies and video games.
  
• Choose tranquil activities (no roughhousing or cartoons) at bedtime. Save the most relaxing one — a back rub, a story — for last, and make sure it happens in your child's bedroom, not in the living room or playroom. With older kids, talk about the day and any events they're looking forward to. This isn't the moment for