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I have read in several places that young children do not really dream like adults do.

For example, research psychologist G. William Domhoff states: “The dream reports of children between 3 and 5 consist primarily of static images portraying animals or physiological states like sleeping” (Domhoff, 2000).

This reminds me of the time when Charley was almost 2 years old and woke up yelling from a nightmare. When he woke up Carl and Wendy (his parents) asked what happened. He kept saying, “Scary. Bunny. Up in the tree.”

Several times during the day he got a far-away and scared look, and he said again: “Scary. Bunny. Up in the tree.” Asking him more questions we realized he meant the bunny itself was scared.

The night before, right before he went to bed, Charley had climbed up wooden stairs in his socks. As he was climbing he suddenly slipped, and severely banged his head on each stair on the way down. Wendy and all of us were worried he might have a concussion. He cried and got a big bump but was okay.

I wondered if in the dream he imagined himself as the vulnerable bunny, and the wooden stairs leading up to the wooden second floor was like going up into a tree.

I remember when I was 3 years old the first nightmare I had was of bears who were about to cook me over a campfire. I yelled in the dream, “Mom! Mom!” and she came. I was so surprised that she was actually there (and so relieved I wasn’t really about to be eaten by bears).

Why do young children dream of animals? Is it somehow rooted in biological memory, or something they incorporate from the animals they learn about.

The psychologist Domhoff also reports:
- About 45% of the characters in young children’s dreams are animals
- Only about 5% are animals in adults’ dreams in the United States
- The percentage of animal dreams is higher in preliterate societies for adults than in industralized nations (Domhoff, 2000).

A followup to Charley’s dream. Recently, Charley (now age 4) recalled a story I’d told him several months ago about chickens. He accurately remembered that in the story a chicken got scared and ran out of the chicken coop. However, the way he told it was, “The chicken got scared and ran up into a tree.”

So I have been wondering: Does he still associate getting scared with going up into a tree? Is it all possible it’s a primate/primitive idea, that a tree is a safe place to hide? Or is he simply thinking, “A chicken is a bird, and birds fly up into trees when they’re scared.”?