Bad dreams

I think that everyone has a least one thing that scares them when they wake up in the middle of the night. I'm not talking about having watched a scary movie and that is what you are thinking about that night. I'm talking about that thing that your mind regularly goes to at night. When I was little it was aliens. I never really thought about a monster or something like that, but aliens. Occasionally I thought about bad guys coming through my room, but mostly when I was scared it was aliens under the bed (um, yeah...I know that that is not really where they would likely come from, but hey...I was little).

Anyway, this last week I got a glimpse into my children's fears.
Josie ended up spending all of the night in bed with Jim and I one night because "there were bad guys." As far as I could tell they were in the hall and or the closet.
Andy had one night where he had trouble going to sleep. I know that it was partly due to the fact that he had a late nap that day and so did not fall asleep as quickly as he normally does. He came out one evening mentioning "the sleep monster."
He was apparently hot from being completely under the covers hiding from the sleep monster. He also asked about bad people who might get him.
How do we handle this? Andy and I actually had a talk about how most people are good and the things we do to keep bad people out. We also talked about all of the people who were protecting Andy (even down to police officers and fire fighters who are out there to help).
Also, in our house we say a pray for good dreams and for God to take away the bad thoughts. We remind them that Jesus is with them always.
Oh, and we changed Andy in to lighter weight pajamas so that he could be under the covers without getting too hot.