5 Year Old & Night Terrors or Nightmares?

My 2 year old has had the same problem in the past. She'd wake up screaming and completely out of it - no amount of talking or touching would help. Our pediatrician said it's best not to try to startle or wake her from the episode. If your chid's night terrors are happening about the same time each night like ours, he suggested going into her room about 15 minutes before an episode and slightly wake her. This will disturb her sleep cycle and help head off the night terror. After about a week, our daughter stopped having them.

HTH!

I have two children (9 and 13) that have night terror. It is night terror and not nightmare, which they remember. My oldest one who is 13 has mostly grown out of them, except when he has high fever. Both of them typically yell like they are being murdered (yes, it sounds that extreme) and bob up and down. After a few minutes, they both finish it with a yawn and curl up and go back to sleep. The key is not to interrupt their trance, that sometimes prolongs it or they will continue to have several more episodes.

My 9 yr daughter barely had it this year, and recently started again. For us, it became more infrequent but it still happens. For my son, there was period that it happened several times a week for almost a year. Keeping a regular schedule is important, make sure that she is not overtired. Sometimes stress can bring it on.

Perhaps your daughter can take a rest during the day? Is she overtired?

I have done a lot of reading on this and there is one notion that you can wake them up before the "regularly scheduled" episode begins to break the cycle. This did not work with either of my children since they were dead asleep, but that is something you can try.

Good luck! I will check back to see if you have more questions.

My 5 year old gets them whenever there is overstimulation during the day. It can be in many forms, just watching a movie at the theater, learning a new skill, playing Leapster a little too long. We watch her activities and try to get her to take breaks from things--go outside if she's inside too long, or vice versa. It's easy to overstimulate a 5 year old. I've looked back on days after she's had a night terror and am baffled. It may just be a physical growing pain as well. If she's not having them often and goes back to sleep easily, like mine does, there shouldn't be anything to be worried about. Still, if you like, talk to your ped about it. Good luck!

My 5 yr old and my husband both have this. I've also heard you grow out of it but obviously that's not everyone seeing as how my husband is an adult. His are much different than my sons though. My son does the same thing as your daughter. I'm opposite of Pinky. If I let my child go back to sleep without him being fully awake, there will be more night terrors. So we wait till he's snapped out of it for a few minutes and then let him get back into bed.

Things that seem to trigger him are when he has a cold, the runny nose irritates him or something and he always has an episode during a cold. Also, if he's too hot, it will trigger one. We've started just putting him in a loose t-shirt instead of long pants and long shirt pajamas because we noticed he's always sweating when he waked from a night terror.

My child gets soo upset, he's crying and the slobber, snot and spit goes down his throat and if we can't get him quieted down quickly enough, we run the risk of him throwing up. Sometimes he's so upset that it only takes 1 minute for him to get sick. They are awful. But we can handle them better now. My child just had a follow up appt. today because he was in the ER(had a virus that made his muscle enzymes rise and he couldn't walk) this weekend and my husband brought up the night terrors and the Dr. promised to do research and find out if there was any new developments or treatments out there and I will share with you, when he gives me the info.

So I know most of what you read says don't wake them. I'm the opposite of that as well. We ofcourse don't shake him or scare him, but we do get in his face and talk to him calmly and tell him where he is and try to get him to walk around and we put on his favorite cartoons. Usually brings him out of it in 10 min. or so. But if you haven't done so already, try making sure he's all the way awake before you put him back to bed. For us, that seems to work in curbing the repeat terrors. Also make sure she's really cool in her bed, loose t-shirts, nothing warm. Good luck and you can pm if you'd like to talk more.