As a young boy I vividly remember having bad dreams, nothing out of the ordinary but dreams that frightened me enough to make me worry if they would return each night. Although my bedroom was on the second floor of our town house it seemed to me that my parents downstairs reading the evening papers were sitting a mile away. What if my nightmare comes back tonight is something going to happen to me? How will my parents hear me? I hope I don’t have bad dreams tonight. These were my thoughts as a child of 8, mum used to tell me “you will be fine nothing is going to happen to you” Bedtime for me was always a worrying time. I started getting anxious the moment I come home from school. Nobody really understood how I really felt about my bad dreams but then, what could they do?
Now In my mid forties I run my own business and am also a foster parent of over 10 years. I have witnessed children from all walks of life, and all with different needs.
Each child deals with their trauma in different ways, some can lock their thoughts up for life, others express their feelings and thoughts quite freely. I can say in my experience as a foster carer most of our children have experienced nightmares and night terrors and can become anxious at bedtime. Most children do grow out of them but that’s not much comfort to them when they are too young to understand this.
As a parent with children suffering from nighttime terrors every effort was made to reduce these episodes, reading before bedtime, not reading before bedtime, no TV, no excitable play before bedtime. Some evenings we thought our strategies were working only to find the bad dreams returning on others.
I stumbled across a stand that supplied Irish fairy doors at a trade show I attended for my business. I was drawn onto this stand because of the concept of the product and what the product could offer me as a foster parent and not for my purpose being there as a retailer. My journey home from the trade show was full of thoughts about the fairy doors and the power they can have to help so many children, not only suffering from night terrors but being separated from their parents, bereavement the list is endless.
So what is a fairy door? It is exactly that, a small door that a child places at home or in the garden and then waits for the fairy to arrive. Once the magic key has been left outside and all the family have signed the agreement from fairy central we just wait for the key to disappear, this is the sign that your fairy has moved in.
Your child’s fairy will only come out when they are asleep and will help blow away any bad dream breezes they see on the bedroom ceiling. If the dreams become intense and worrying for the child the fairy will leave a fairy note outside the door for your child to read, typically something like this.
“Ben, I have been trying really hard to keep the bad dream breezes away but they just keep on coming back. I think it’s time for me to ask for some help”. The story goes on to explain how your child’s fairy is going to go to fairy central to get more help to blow the bad dream breezes away.
You child’s imagination will allow them to believe that their fairy understands that they are having bad dreams. The fairy left your child a note how else would they know they have bad dreams. Someone they think actually knows what they are going through and someone they can confide in.
These fairy doors have helped children through bereavement and all other issues and problems. Is your child being bullied at school? You may not be aware of this but have they left a note and told their fairy? Is there a solution that can be passed to them through their fairy? The benefits of having a fairy door are endless.
In my role as a foster parent these doors will be invaluable in my home, their fairy could possibly be the only thing our children could confine and trust for help and guidance.
All you need to do is believe.
