As a parent, you are probably wondering what do babies dream about. Or maybe a wondering when do babies start dreaming? In fact, do babies dream?
Nothing appears more peaceful to a parent than to see the baby sleeping. You can just keep looking at them and their pretty little expressions while they sleep. But what if there is a closed stage curtain behind the twitch, jerk, and grimace or the faces they make? What goes on in their brains? Do they absorb more information with each day that passes? According to many psychologists, parents seldom mistakenly compare their baby’s ability to perceive with an ability to dream.
We think that if humans have the ability to perceive things, then they can dream as well. The brain of a baby is very immature. There are few theories from the neuroscientists that the babies are actually dreamless for the first few years of life. But, we do not know that for sure as the truth is somewhat concealed still. It gives a straight challenge to the human race on how little we know about a baby’s brain process.
Let’s first understand what are dreams?
Human’s sleep is divided into two cycles – REM what stands for Rapid Eye Movement and Non-REM. Throughout the night, we shuffle between the two while we sleep. Usually, we have a particular period of Non-REM sleep followed by a short period of the REM sleep. We dream only during the REM sleep duration. But, how does this concern the babies? A baby spends more time in REM than an adult but the sleep cycles vary as compared to the adults. For instance, if you spend about 25% of your night in REM sleep, your baby spends up to 55% or more of the sleep in the REM sleep.
REM is the more active and lighter sleep as compared to the non-REM sleep where we do not dream. So, when you say you had a very light sleep for a couple of hours last night, now you know, you were in the REM sleep mostly. This is the main reason why your baby wakes up more frequently at night and has shorter naps. Thus, after we know the above science of sleep cycle, there are fair chances that the babies do dream.
When do Babies Start Dreaming?
The simplest answer to this question is that there is no certain answer to it! They could start dreaming the second they are out of the mother’s womb or maybe at any age they start perceiving the worldly things. Experts have suggested theories which say a day old baby must dream given the time they spend on REM cycle. Only that, babies can’t talk to us about their dreams, we do not assume that the dreams are not happening! Maybe they do not dream in the way we do. Our dreams are usually more of drama or a story which involves a chain of events (could be an event from the past or the events that we hear about). Our dreams involve us or the people in our life. The dream might contain a dialogue or a storyline in a set. But babies do not have enough mental ability to assemble such a dream. Newborns do not have a sense of themselves or other things around, doubting hence, if then the babies at all dream?
As a matter of fact, babies grow the most while they are asleep in the REM cycles which are so not like ours. Imagine we grow every time we sleep? REM cycle in a baby lets their brain develop the new neural pathways (R), learning and growing each second leaving no power left to dream.
Do babies have nightmares?
This could be a very troubling question to ask “do babies have bad dreams?” In fact, if you believe that babies can dream then what bad could they think about from their limited experience? Pooping, crying, sucking and drooling? These are the only events that a baby has until they grow older. When the baby becomes aware of the surroundings, then maybe yes, who knows? Possible that the baby’s mom shows up in the dream making it pretty but if they know something that has hurt them, could be a dog, they can see it too in the dreams. Now you tell us, do newborn dream?
The next time if you ever want to have a superpower – think about this. Tell us what do you think now about your baby? Do you believe that the babies dream?
Share the article ahead and tell us what you think about it.
