Dad Regrets Instructing His 9-Year-Old To Refrain From Waking Him Up In The Middle Of The Night

Aug 08, 2023

Mayo Clinic defines a nightmare as a disturbing dream associated with negative feelings like anxiety or fear that awakens you. Nightmares are common and not limited to people of a specific age group. However, the commonality of a nightmare decreases with age; this implies that older people experience less terrifying dreams than kids. Per the Mayo Clinic, nightmares are common in children between the ages of 3 and 6, decreasing in frequency after age 10.

According to the Sleep Foundation, nightmares are most likely to occur in the second half of the night, during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep. Nightmares have a characteristic feature that involves dreams that appear real, very upsetting, and progressively become more frightening as they unfold. The dream's plot is often related to disturbing themes involving threats to life and survival. More often than not, a person having a nightmare is jolted awake from sleep due to the dream’s intensity. This may be followed by anxiousness, sweating or an elevated heart rate.

People of different age groups react differently to nightmares. So long as it is not a nightmare disorder, adults can quickly put themselves together after a nightmare. But that is not the case for children. According to the Sleep Foundation, reassuring children after a nightmare episode is the most effective tactic to prevent them from developing sleep anxiety.

In one such case, a Reddit user @u/Accomplished-Towel-3, in a July 23, 2023 post, detailed how her dad shooed her away after a nightmare episode. Afterward, he asked her to desist from waking him up in the middle of the night, no matter the circumstance. 

Reddit user, @u/Accomplished-Towel-3 detailed an almost successful burglary event that happened one week after her dad warned her never to wake him up for any reason whatsoever. The original poster (OP) explained that when she was 9 years old, her dad gave her a stern warning against waking him up after she ran to him for comfort following a nightmare. 

“He told me to go back to bed, and never wake him up for anything ever again. I rarely woke him up for anything, but I made sure not to,” she wrote.

However, one week after the incident, the OP got up to use the bathroom when she noticed someone trying to break into their house. 

“A week goes by and it's the weekend, so I'm allowed to sleep on the couch and watch TV. I get up to go pee in the middle of the night, and as I'm walking back, I hear a tapping on the front door. I'm frozen in fear already, and I hear the person trying to open the door for what felt like 3 minutes.”

After trying without success to open the front door, the burglar continued to the backyard and gave up when he was just 2 inches from gaining entry. 

“And then I see their hand reach through the doggy door to grab the handle. They were just 2 inches away from it, I was holding my breath at this point. They finally give up and I muster the courage to move again and go back to sleep,” @u/Accomplished-Towel-3 added.

The next morning, the OP informed her family of the unsuccessful break-in attempt. However, she was told that the warning she received from her dad didn’t apply to emergencies. In the post, she argued:  

“My little brain at the time didn't get it because the nightmare I had felt like an emergency haha”

Readers on the platform flocked to the comment section to empathize with OP's experience and share their thoughts. 

“Eww how scary to see a hand come in through the doggy door! That’s some nightmare fuel right there. That was a messed up thing to say to a 9 year old, too. You can’t help when you have a nightmare, and they suck. I would sleep on the floor next to my parents bed when I woke up from a nightmare,” one Redditor wrote.

“You gotta be extremely irresponsible to tell a kid something like that… like bro wtf if there is a fire an intruder whatever crazy thing that can happen,” another commented.

“Parents should never tell their kids to never wake them up. My kids dad yelled at my daughter because she woke him up about a person at the front door - she was 4 and I was at work. She says she wouldn't have woken him up even if the house was on fire after that. Waking up to the occasional nightmare or sickness is nothing in the bigger scheme of things, and you end up with kids that trust you with the important things,” a third Redditor wrote.

“So an emergency is something that's bad for them, not bad for you. That's shit,” commented another.

“I had a nightmare with sleep paralysis a few weeks ago and woke up my mom who was super nice despite being sleep deprived. Another difference is that I’m 30,” a user wrote.

“It's definitely a law of unintended consequences story, but it doesn't feel to me like young OP's compliance was malicious here. Just a kid doing their best to do what their parents told them,” yet another Redditor commented.

What do you think of the OP not alerting her parents when she noticed the burglar? What would you have done if you were in a similar situation? Let us know, and be sure to pass this article on to friends, family members and other people you think would have an answer!