They may manifest as a real representation of a troubling issue, or as a symbol. Generally, nightmares are a combination of both, helping a child to work out issues that carry over from his waking hours. While most children's nightmares are nothing to lose sleep over, Ferber says that after ages 5 or 6, recurring nightmares could signal a problem. This is especially true if your child also has unreasonable fears during the daytime. Some psychologists say that comforting should be just the first step.
Reassurance is the most important of the four.
It calls for comforting your child after he wakes up from a nightmare. You'll want to hold him and calm him until he is able to give you, if he's old enough, the details of his scary encounter. From there, you use more playful, artistic, creative approaches to kind of play with the dream. Enter the rescripting phase. This involves creating a new ending for the nightmare.