What Are Your Recurring Dreams?

Plus: Is there only one way to raise compassionate kids?

First, a quick announcement: Spring Break is about to start here (omg my kids won’t shut up about it) so I’m running a SPRING BREAK SALE! Get 25% off paid subscriptions through next week.

Honestly, I could really use your financial support right now. I’m deep in my book reporting on some extremely complicated parenting topics, and in order to do them justice, I’ve had to turn down other paid work. This newsletter is my primary source of income until my book is turned in this summer. So if you can subscribe and support my reporting and writing, I’d be immensely grateful. (Group and gift subscriptions are also on sale!)

Now onto our weekly discussion thread. I am totally fascinated by dreams and love unpacking the potential meaning behind them (I swear I am a therapist in a parallel universe). I tend to have a lot of anxiety dreams, and mine generally come in three flavors:

• I need to be somewhere by a specific time and I can’t get there. Often I can’t move, I can’t use my phone, or I am lost.

• I am expected to do something in front of lots of people and I realize I haven’t prepared. Often I’m in a play and don’t my lines or have a piano performance and haven’t practiced or can’t remember how the piece starts.

• I decide to move somewhere by myself (often boarding school, which… well, there’s some history there) and then I arrive and am totally crushed by loneliness and wish I could leave. These are the worst dreams, and I often wake up bawling and also SO RELIEVED to discover it was a dream.

  

Gee, what an uplifting topic! I wish I could say I have recurring good dreams but, nope. Just the bad ones. Unpack that, therapists.

What are your recurring dreams? The good, the bad, or the ugly? And what do you think they mean? (Or, hey, analyze mine if you want, LOL.) Share in the comments!

Is It Impossible to "Teach” Kindness and Compassion?

And now for today’s

Today I’m commenting on this Instagram post from responsive_parenting, which has more than 3,200 likes:

Here are my thoughts.