“I had a bad dream!”

We hear our four year old utter this sentence at least three to four times a week in our house. Probably more.

Usually, it’s a ploy to come sleep in mom and dad’s bed.

I know this because he’ll yell it literally 3 minutes after bedtime, when there’s no earthly way he’s even come close to being fully asleep yet.

But sometimes, your kid has a bad dream for reals. And it’s kind of unnerving when they hit a point in their lives where they can describe it in detail.

The morning after Phil climbed in bed with us last week, I was making breakfast with him. As we chatted about what kind of cereal each of us was going to have, I asked him about his bad dream from the night before.

I’ll be honest. I was expecting complete and total b.s.

What I got was a pretty deep, kind of scary little boy nightmare. And that made me feel like mother of the year.

Phil has been testing our limits more and more since his baby sister was born. I wouldn’t say he doesn’t listen, but he’s definitely trying to find out just how much he needs to listen… and just how long he can take to respond. We’re working on that almost constantly. Check out what he told me about his dream – it all boils down to him thinking about how bad stuff can happen if he doesn’t listen.

“There was a big sign on our roof that said, “Don’t take down this sign or bad guys will get in.” Phil took down the sign, and bad guys came in. They were coming in through a big hole in our wall.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” he said to me. “We fixed it later.”

Dad was in the kitchen cooking, and there was a knocking sound. Phil told his dad that there were bad guys coming for him.

“The bad guys wore ties, but didn’t look like zombies.” (The last time we went to Chili’s for lunch, they had tablets with games on em at each table. Josh and I discovered that Phil is too young for a game about cartoon zombies, guys. Way too young.)

When Phil put the sign back on the roof, the bad guys went away.

I got the creepiest, horrified, helpless feeling as Phil was telling me about this dream. Like, there was this terrible dream he had, where bad guys were trying to get all of us, bad guys were trying to hurt my little boy, and there was nothing I could do to help.

I think I like his bad dreams even less than he does.

But at least the dream had a point? Do what you’re supposed to, and the bad stuff stops happening, right?