Listening to kids trying to figure out words to describe what is going on is really interesting (hilarious). They don’t quite know all the right words, but they know enough adjacent words to form some descriptions and thoughts. Sometimes, they tend to blend words together to make up new words - hence the daymare was born.

My 3 year old son has been starting to get out of bed after story time if he doesn’t fall right asleep. It’s been a trend when my 5 year old daughter was around the same age. I try to be as patient as possible (within reason) before trying to separate them into different rooms or give in and lay on the ground until they go to sleep. Now, my son knows the meaning of nightmare and when he constantly gets out of bed, he explains he had a nightmare. I keep telling him that he needs to actually be asleep to have a nightmare. He hasn’t been asleep yet, so it’s just a bad thought and it should be easy to think about something else. One night, he processed what I said a bit more and said it wasn’t a nightmare..it was a daymare.

I kind of smirked when he said it because I think that in his mind, a nightmare just happens at night regardless of whether you are asleep or not. After many nights of correcting him, his brain probably thought that since you are awake in the “day” and the “mare” is a bad thought, he would combine the words together. Now I hear daymare consistently as an excuse to a nightmare. At least it makes the back and forth during the nighttime more entertaining now!