From the author: Disturbance in falling asleep and sleeping is a problem that should always alert parents. The likelihood that your child suffers from so-called hypnagogic hallucinations is quite high. And then he will need the help of a child psychologist as quickly as possible. If a child: - refuses to go to bed alone, - tries in any way to delay the moment of falling asleep, - sometimes cries - and even experiences panic attacks, - perhaps he is experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations. This is a special type hallucinations, which can occur in mentally healthy children. As is known, hallucinations are perceptions without a real object, that is, they are imaginary visions, sounds, voices, smells, sensations. The peculiarity of hypnagogic hallucinations is that they occur before falling asleep, usually with eyes closed , in a dark field of view. Most often they are visual, but may be accompanied by corresponding sensations and sounds. Usually the same vivid, sometimes fantastic, images of false perception are repeated before each night, sometimes even before falling asleep during the day. Children can identify their hypnagogic hallucinations with dreams. Most often, the waking perception of false images in real space turns into dreams, when the same frightening creatures appear in nightmares. Children do not always talk about their hallucinations in detail. They can simply say that they are scared, that they are afraid to sleep without their parents. Such hallucinations may not appear if, for example, they feel mothers and parents with their bodies. Because of fears of seeing scary images, a child may sleep clinging to his mother. Some children sleep so lightly because of their anxiety about horrors that they can immediately wake up as soon as their mother leaves them. No persuasion or persuasion that they should not be afraid has no effect on children suffering from hypnagogic hallucinations. How can they not be afraid if scary images are the same reality for them, like their mother, like everything around them? Frequent “heroes” of hypnagogic hallucinations are monsters, monsters, snakes, huge spiders, aliens, dead relatives, “revived” scary images from cartoons, transformers from computer games. The peculiarity of these hallucinations is that all these false images are very vivid, and children literally see them side by side before their eyes. When they describe them, they often say that these fears are in their eyes. This is most likely due to the fact that scary images appear as soon as they close their eyes in the dark, or when they find themselves alone in a room. Sometimes, due to the fear of hypnagogic hallucinations, a child can instantly fall asleep. The children themselves explain this by the desire to get ahead of the appearance of hypnagogia. Often in children such problems are accompanied by persistent nocturnal enuresis, repeated during the night. It happens that, due to panic fears of hypnagogic hallucinations in a child, one of the parents is forced to sleep with him until he is 15-16 years old. What What should parents do if their children begin to be afraid to go to bed? Of course, the first step is to try to talk to the child about possible fears. However, such heart-to-heart conversations should under no circumstances be started before bedtime, so as not to completely disturb the child. It is better to organize this during the day, in a calm environment. And even do this as if by chance, during walks, some games, while watching cartoons. At the same time, it is important to find out: what the child is most afraid of and how he is afraid (which fear is more terrible); whether those “living” images that he sees “with his eyes”, from his dreams; does he see scary and recurring dreams; who do the scary images look like and what do they want from the child; how do they look in the drawings (draw, show in the picture). If children tell their parents or loved ones about their unusual fears, then first of all you cannot reproach them, scold them (“Are you being capricious? You’ll get it from me!”); deny fears (“Look, there’s nothing!”); call them names (“coward”, “liar”); accuse them of lying (“You you're making it up on purpose!"); ridicule ("Ha-ha-ha,.