How to support dreamy children

Overview of the topic:

Dreamy children have their "head in the clouds", as they are described in everyday life. They take longer to do everyday things like put their shoes on and they are often not focussed at school either. They live in fantasy worlds and are often extremely sensitive and delicate. As a parent, you are particularly challenged with a dreamy child: you have to plan more time for the daily routine and pick up the child with a lot of calm and empathy when you want something from them. Teachers also experience similar things with dreamy pupils. There is also the worry of how a child who is daydreaming can cope and find their way in the often demanding and fast-paced everyday life. Even homework can become a huge burden for dreamy children and those around them.

Dreamy children are often discouraged and sad, they realise that they cannot cope with the demands placed on them. As parents, however, you can help your child to cope with everyday life and school at a slower pace. The most important thing is to accept that you cannot change your child and help them to get to know themselves and accept themselves as they are.

Tips for parents on how to deal with dreamy children:

• Visualise the individual steps of procedures such as "packing the school desk" or "tidying up the room" using illustrated checklists, for example.
• Before going to sleep, ask your child to visualise important processes as if they were watching a film. Click here to go directly to the other tips.

You can read the full article by Fabian Grolimund with in-depth information for parents and teachers of dreamy children here:

Help, my child is a dreamer!

It's not easy being the parent of a dreamy child. You constantly have to remind your child of all sorts of things, plan with them, structure and guide them, look for their untraceable belongings just before the end of the day, say everything three times and deal with the anger that arises.

You might be worried: What will happen to my child? How will they manage school if their thoughts are constantly elsewhere? How is he or she supposed to gain a foothold in working life later on if he or she doesn't follow even the simplest instructions, forgets and loses everything and needs hours to complete simple tasks?

Feedback from the school is often particularly unsettling. What should you do as a parent if your child «could already do it at school, but just doesn't listen and is too slow» and «is constantly distracted in class and daydreams»?

The parents are under pressure, the children aren't doing any better. All day long, they hear phrases like: «Can you do it a bit faster?», «Now is really not the time to play!», «Why are you staring holes in the air again?», «Now you've lost your gloves again! Do you actually think we're millionaires?», «Look, the others are almost finished and you haven't even started yet».

Dreamy children are sensitive. They have the feeling that everyone wants something from them all the time.

Fabian Grolimund

Sensitive, as many dreamy children are, they feel the constant worry about their future. They want to please those around them, but can't manage it. They have the feeling that everyone constantly wants something from them that they can't fulfil. This can lead to immense suffering and the feeling of "not being right".

This suffering is often underestimated by outsiders. Perhaps precisely because, under pressure, dreamers withdraw into their dream world and then appear as if they don't let anything get to them and don't see the necessity of all the requests for change that are made of them.

If we take a closer look, we can see how discouraged and sad many of these children are.

When everyday life makes you tired

For many dreamy children, everyday life is a feat of strength. Almost everything that our modern world demands of us is associated with a particular effort for them.

Dreamy children are rarely bored. They can often occupy themselves for hours and need little external stimulation. If they are allowed to pursue their interests at their own pace, they sometimes seem to be in a trance, so absorbed and focussed that they can hardly be torn away. Their imagination and the richness of their inner world never cease to amaze outsiders.

These children are confronted with a society that expects them to react quickly and at speed and inundates them with plans, to-do lists and mountains of tasks. A world in which they are expected to be alert and focussed in order to complete externally set tasks; in which the clock sets the pace; in which time must always be used well in order to achieve increasingly ambitious goals; in which things are loud and busy and you have to assert yourself and assert yourself.

How you can support your child

How can parents support a dreamy child? Firstly, you can help them to cope better with the demands of the outside world:

• Use illustrated checklists to visualise the individual steps of processes such as «packing the school desk» or «tidying up the room».
• Before going to sleep, ask your child to visualise important processes as if they were watching a film.
• Assign a limited time budget to unpleasant tasks and visualise this, for example with the help of an egg cooker clock.
• Introduce simple organisation systems, such as different trolley boxes for toys and school materials or colour coding for materials in different school subjects.
• Help your child to relieve their working memory by writing down tasks and appointments and - depending on their age - photographing them or programming them into their mobile phone.
• Plan together with your child and break down the tasks into manageable steps.

However, it is even more important that you give your child the opportunity to be themselves and recover from the challenges of everyday life. If your child doesn't want to talk about it after a stressful day at school, you can consciously take a step back. Perhaps say to them: «I think you need a little rest.»

Make sure there are enough rest periods in which the child does not have to look at the clock and can pursue his or her passions undisturbed.

Give your child the opportunity to be themselves,
recover from the challenges of everyday life

Just be there: Many dreamers enjoy being in the same room without having to interact. If they are allowed to read, build Lego or colour while their parents are also reading, working in the kitchen or doing their work.

And most importantly: accept that you cannot change your child.

Dreamy children hear the threat again and again: «If it stays like this, I'll be in the dark.» This is based on the belief that the child must first become a different person in order to be successful and happy as an adult. We repeatedly encounter parents with this attitude in our work.

This desire for change is not only unrealisable, but also unnecessary. Dreamy children usually remain somewhat chaotic, slow and distracted. They will also forget many things in the future, plan too little and think ahead.

And they can still become satisfied adults. To do this, however, they do not have to change fundamentally, but rather know and accept themselves. They need to know where their strengths lie and cultivate and develop them. And they need to come to terms with their weaknesses and find ways to deal with them.