“Nightmares are just like dreams,” says Dr. Isabel Echanis-Melgar, a clinical psychologist and the current chair of Clinical and Counseling Psychology of the Psychological Association of the Philippines. She points out that unpleasant events during the waking day are sometimes suppressed by the conscious mind to protect itself. During the night, when the conscious mind is asleep, those events may surface in the form of nightmares.
Dr. Isabel Echanis-Melgar explains that recurrent nightmares in children could indicate an underlying stress or anxiety
Nightmares are distressing, often scary dreams. They usually happen during the second half of the night, when dreaming is most intense. When the nightmare is over, the child may wake up a parent or someone he or she trusts to tell that person what has occurred in the dream.
Dr. Melgar explains that children are cocooned by the notion that the world is safe, that everything is safe. “So once that is disturbed or interrupted, it affects the child’s concept of the world. And take note that a child is still dealing with growing-up issues, tapos it [the child’s worldview] will be interrupted pa with illness or illness in the family. An adult can rationalize everyday occurrences. In fact, an adult is even able to develop an objective approach. A child, on the other hand, precisely because his formal thinking is not yet fully developed, does not know how to remove himself from the situation. He does not know how to overcome his grief or how he can understand his trauma.”
Night terrors, nightmares
Night terrors are not dreams but partial awakening from sleep accompanied by unusual behavior—like screaming, mumbling, and kicking—that may be frightening to parents. During a night terror, the child may also sweat profusely, hyperventilate, and may not respond to being awakened. Night terrors occur most often in toddlers and preschoolers, and happen within the first two hours of sleep. During a night terror, a child usually cannot be awakened or comforted and in all likelihood will have no recollection of the previous night’s events the next morning. But interestingly, night terrors are harmless and each event will end in deep sleep. Night terrors are usually not caused by bad dreams and are not indications of some underlying serious problem. They are thought to result from some immature part of the young child’s developing brain and are more likely to happen when the child is overly tired. 
For the rest of the article, please see the July – September 2008 issue.