Dreaming about
a child

A child in a dream can be a real child you love and worry about, a stranger's child who stands for something new, or the child you used to be. Dreaming about a child usually points to something in your life that's still growing and needs guiding, or to an old feeling from your own early years. It is rarely a dream about wanting children, and it is never a prediction about one.

The first question is whose child it was, and the second is what you were doing with them. Holding a small hand at a fair is one dream and searching a crowd for a face is another. And a child you don't know, staring at you from the end of a corridor, is something else again. Your own life (a new role, a stage you've outgrown, an actual child in your care) settles the rest.

What dreaming about a child means

Unlike a baby, which can only be held and fed, a child walks, talks back and runs off. That's what most child dreams play on: something with a will of its own that you're still responsible for.

Something past its first stage

A project, a business or a relationship that has survived its fragile beginning can show up as a child of four or seven. It walks on its own now, but it can't yet be trusted to cross the road. Was the child in your dream hard work, willful, always getting into trouble? Then look at what in your life has reached that awkward middle stage, which needs less feeding and more steering.

Your younger self

A child who feels familiar, even if they don't look like you, is often you at that age. These dreams usually come when something has stirred up an old feeling, like being left out, being praised, or being frightened and not knowing whom to tell. Ask how old the child was, and what was happening in your life at that age.

Curiosity you've put away

Children play, ask a hundred questions and get lost in a game for hours. Adults who've stopped doing anything just for the fun of it sometimes dream of a child pulling at their sleeve, asking them to come and play. And the dream may be pointing at a side of you that has gone quiet under bills and deadlines.

A real child

If you're a parent, a teacher or an aunt who babysits every week, the child in your dream may simply be that child, which is the plainest reading and often the right one. Our dreams follow what fills our days,^[1] and children fill a lot of them. Then the dream is a replay of your worries, hopes and tired evenings.

Dreaming about losing a child

Losing a child in a crowd, a shop or a park is the most common frightening child dream. Nearly every parent has it. For parents it usually reflects how much there is to keep track of, and how little of the world you control. For everyone else, the lost child is often a responsibility you fear has slipped (a project you've left alone too long, a promise you made and half-forgot). The panic of searching is the important part. Did you find the child again, and where?

Dreaming about a child in danger

A child about to fall from a window, wading into deep water or running toward traffic is a dream of helplessness. If the child is yours, it doesn't mean they're at risk. But it does mean you care, sometimes more anxiously than you'd like. If the child is a stranger, ask what fragile thing in your life feels exposed right now. Whether you reached them in time matters, because dreams where you save the child often come when you feel able to protect what's important.

Dreaming about having a child you don't have

Some people dream, with total certainty, that they have a son or daughter who doesn't exist. It can feel completely normal. Sometimes the dream is a wish, especially if you've been thinking about having children. More often the dream child is something you've made or started (a book, a garden, a company) and now feel as responsible for as a parent would.

Dreaming about yourself as a child

Seeing yourself small, in your old school uniform or your childhood bedroom, takes you back to a particular time. These dreams often come during big changes, when part of you wants the safety of being looked after, or after a visit to your parents' home. The page on childhood goes further into dreams of your early years and the places they happened.

Dreaming about a child who won't listen

A child who ignores you, runs off or throws a tantrum while everyone watches is a dream about control. It tends to show up when something in your life is refusing to do as it's told. That could be a team at work, a teenager at home, or your own appetite and moods. Losing your temper with the child in the dream can be useful, because it shows how frustrated you are with whatever the child stands for.

Dreaming about a strange child

Horror films have turned the silent child at the end of the hallway into a cliché, and the image can follow you into sleep. A strange, watchful child in a dream is usually something new in you that you don't yet understand, like a talent you've ignored, or a feeling you've told yourself you don't have. But it feels eerie only because it's unfamiliar. Try asking the child, in your mind, what they want, and notice the first answer that comes.

Dreaming about a child according to Jung and Freud

Jung saw a beginning in the child, and Freud a wish with no disguise on.

Jung on the child as what's about to begin

Jung counted the child among the archetypes, the images that turn up in myths, fairy tales and dreams everywhere, and in his writing it stands for the future, for potential and for a new beginning.^[2] A child in your dream, read that way, is less about your past than about what's trying to start in you, and one who ignores you or runs off is a beginning with ideas of its own. It also explains why the age matters so much: a toddler is a start that can barely walk, and a nine-year-old has already begun to answer back.

Freud on children's wishes

Freud noticed that small children's dreams are often plain wishes with nothing hidden. His young daughter, kept from food after a day of being sick, dreamed of strawberries.^[3] He used dreams like hers to argue that adult dreams are wishes too, only better disguised. So when an adult dreams of a child, his question is whose wish it is. A child laughing in an open field is easy to read as a wish for lightness, and one who won't listen may carry a wish to be the person who gets to be willful.

The biblical and spiritual meaning of a child in dreams

A child in the Gospel of Matthew

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus sets a child in the middle of his disciples and tells them that unless they become as little children, they won't enter the kingdom of heaven.^[4] If your child dream had a sense of simplicity or trust about it, that passage is what many readers have in mind.

Questions to ask about your child dream

Children in dreams are rarely only children, and the details are what tell you what yours was about. These questions can help.

• Whose child was it: yours, someone else's, a stranger's, or you?
• How old were they, and what was happening in your life at that age?
• Were you caring for them, searching for them or running from them?
• What in your life right now is growing and still needs your guidance?
• When did you last do something purely for fun?

Oniri asks you who the child was and what's been on your mind lately, and only then reads the dream. The same lost child means one thing to a parent and another to someone with a new job.