I dreamt that I was in charge of my twelve year old grandson.

Hello, I am happy to help with this dream. What you have already tried, to relate the dream to your sense of responsibility when he is with you, is a great place to start. Dreams are symbolic of what is going on within our unconscious minds. It is a representative of our inner most fears, thoughts, feelings, experiences, memories, etc. But, I think what scares us is that sometimes a dream will come true, but we have no way of knowing which ones will and which ones will not. Let me assure you that dreams of this graphic nature are common for everyone and so it is your fear that this dream has brought to the surface, it is not reality. Dreams show our most raw emotions, so a small fear gets magnified in the dream to draw our attention to it. The important thing is to address the fear that this dream is relating to. But, first we have to figure out what it is really about. Let's take the dream one piece at a time...

In the beginning you are in charge of your grandson but you quickly lose him in the station of corridors and doors. It is a complicated system and you fear that he has been run over. But, since you didn't hear anything, he was on a proper corridor. As children, and grandchildren get older, we have to witness them grow further and further away from us. Your grandson is getting to the age when he'll be running off on his own more and more. So this part of the dream does seem to be about your sense of responsibility. But it doesn't just have to be when you are in charge of him. A grandparent worries about their grandchildren all of the time, not just when they are in charge.

The system is confusing and you cannot see your grandson, but you can see other boys come running by. This part of the dream is about distance. In the dream you are recognizing that you are getting farther and farther away from him. I would ask if in your real life this has any truth to it? Are you, in some way, becoming more distant from your grandchild? Notice that the distance was not your choice. It strikes me that he is 12. At this age, puberty starts to change him and he is getting into the teenage years when he will be distant from everyone for a while. This could be what your mind is exploring in this dream.

In the next part of the dream, you are trying to get some help. You have to scream over the phone and talk with several people. This is about you not being the authority figure for your grandson. You have to rely on other authority figures in his life right now to keep him safe. But, you do take action. You get in your car and drive to find the police because you do not trust that they will respond quickly enough. So, there is some distrust of how he is currently being treated by the authority figures around him. Your mind is expressing your doubt in others to be able to keep him as safe as you can.

Then, when you return to the station, you see him and another boy emerge from the wall. You witness a very cruel sexual act that is violating and painful. Your grandson isn't crying but did say he was "hurting inside". So, sex in a dream is usually not about the actual sexual act. It represents your sense that your grandsone is being pained in some way that hurts him on the inside- mentally or emotionally. This may represent something that has happened recently involving your grandson that you have some unresolved feelings about. It could mean that your mind is expressing your own concern over something that you had no ability to "save him from" in real life. When you learn that your son-in-law had threatened to kill or maime the rapist but hadn't done anything. This seems to be suggesting that you have some concerns regarding his ability to handle some issue with your grandson.

Whew, so all in all, this dream does seem to be very significant. Hence, the sense that it was real and may be some sort of warning. I would say, though that rather than being a warning for the future, it might be an expression of your own anger over something that has happened recently to your grandson. Again, I want to emphasize that the sexual act is symbollic of some kind of violation and not a sex act in reality. The dream is trying to draw your attention to some un-expressed emotions of pain that you have bottled up that come from watching your grandson go through something painful and not being able to "save him" from the experience. Please let me know if you have any questions or details that you would like to discuss further. I will happily continue this conversation if it is necessary. Thank you and good luck.