Night Terrors - New Braunfels, TX

My sister thought her daughter was having night terrors...and then she finally realized there were spiritual attacks going on! My cousin was over there one day and say a loaf of bread fly off the counter! They heard voices, sometimes her name or her daughter's name being called. They moved her into their bedroom and the night terrors stopped and they moved out ASAP. She'd not had night terrors in the new house.

Just a thought,
S.

When I went through this with my son, I discovered it helped to talk to him very calmly and suggest he go to the bathroom and get a drink of water (without trying to wake him). I don't know why, but that usually helped him transition back to bed.

My 5 1/2 year old son also has night terrors. He had them around age 3 1/2 and then they stopped and recently began again...EVERY NIGHT! His usually occurs 1-1.5 hours after he first falls asleep. Luckily, he doesn't remember them, as they really scare me! I've talked with his pediatrician and she has recommended that we try to interrupt his sleep cycle before the night terrors happen. So, if there is a routine time that your son has his terrors, go into his room and simply turn him over and say "I love you" or something like that. We are not supposed to totally awaken him, but simply interrupt his sleep cycle. I try to do this, but sometimes the terrors happen before I go into his room or can occur again later in the night. Also, the pediatrician said that the terrors can occur do to stress or lack of sleep. I do know that my son has been going to sleep about 1 hour later than during the winter, simply because it is more light outside. I need to look into buying a shade to darken his bedroom. Good luck and please let me know if you have any success or other helpful recommendations.

-M.

Hi R.-

My 18 month old went through this briefly (luckily for us) but our pediatrician suggested that we pre-empt the night terrors by waking him slightly just before they usually occur. For us, it usually started around 12:00 so she suggested we wake him at 11:30 to throw off his sleep pattern. Since our son's terrors never got too bad and it did not last too long, we never tried it but you might want to. Although you still have to wake up to do this, it might be easier on you than the current drama you are going through at night.

Good luck,
K.

My son had these for about a month (he was 5 at the time). I read somewhere that having a strict bed time helped. We tried this and within a week our terrors were going. This was about 5 months ago. I am worried that they will come back since school is out and we have a relaxed schedule these days. I have been trying to only have one late night in a row, to see if that will help.

Good Luck!

My 2.5 yr old daughter has been having these since October. They started out as only once a month, but since about February have been every night. They usually occur about 12:30 and last about 15-30 minutes. Lately the piercing scream has subsided now she just kicks and whines. I took her to the doctor in April just because I was worried about her sleep and that is when I was told she was having night terrors every night.They told me to give her benadryl every night before bed for 8 days. Well after 4 days it wasn't working, so I called back and I now have an appt. at Texas Children's Sleep Center in July for them to evaulate her.

She never knows that she is having these terrors and usually once she settles down she is in a very deep sleep. I am just hoping they can give us an answer becuase we can't keep going on like this.

R.,
We just had a couple of nights of those with my 3 yr old. I heard you are not supposed to wake them up but I don't know why. So, we would just into her room and try to comfort her and eventually wake her up gently, she usually asks for a glass of water, after she drinks it she is calmed down and goes back to sleep without any problem. I have read stuff about this, and they say one cause might be over tiredness, coincidentally, both days she had them she hadn't taken her afternoon nap and had a lot of activity during the day. I think that good scents, the calming white noise, and all the stuff is good.
Good luck,
K.

Both of my children have suffered from the same thing. As far as how to prevent them from happening I am not sure but something i have found that makes the process a little easier is to have the child focus on something like a pet and have them point it out to you. for example we have a pet names onyx. we ask our son where she is at. you may have to ask several times but it works. they are forced in a calm and polite way to focus. when he looks towards her i ask him to point to her. he will. sometimes all it takes is one time and sometimes i have to find something else of interest to him for him to focus on like daddy or another pet or the fish tank. He loves the fish tank. Once i figured out this trick i realized that he would only have one episode (as if it was not enough) a night. It gently pulls him out of his fight between sleep and waking. Makes him focus on things he likes giving him comfort in what he sees and allows his mind to rest instead of being temporarily satisfied until he remembers what he was doing and starting the whole process again. I can only hope this will help you as I can honestly say ...i know how you feel. Best of luck to you and let me know if i can be of any assistance to you.

Both of my sons have had a few. They are scary! What worked for us was having them go to the bathroom. I would walk them to the toilet and tell them to go. It stopped the night terror for us and they would just wash their hands and quietly go back to bed. My doctor also suggested trying to wake them up when we went to bed. The night terrors were always about 2 hours after they went to sleep. I think that worked but we didn't have them every night so it was hard to tell. Good luck!

Hi R.,

Have you tried taking him to the bathroom to see if he needs to go? This worked with all 5 of us kids when we were little, and it also worked with kids I babysat. All seemed to go back to sleep with no recurrences. You may need to help him more than usual, but once girls sit on the commode they just go!

Good luck! jenifer

I dont believe it is night terrors. Toddlers "dont get" WHY they are dreaming....little people are just learning and coming into "themselves"...they simply dont get why they have these scenes in their heads....what, to you and me, might be a cool dream, is exausting to a two year old.
I wouldnt worry too much about it...get plenty of exsercise, eat a good diet...the rest should take care of itself.
I, also, wouldnt do heavy scents....after all, do you want to smell a strong odor when you sleep?
I wouldnt.

Margaret :0

My daughter used to wake up screaming (like a really really scary bad dream) anywhere from 4-12 times a night. Turned out (for her) to be food allergies. When I took her off of preservatives, artificial colors, chocolate and dairy, they completely stopped. One year later at almost 3, she still will get them if she has eaten anything she's allergic to that day.
You could try experimenting with allergens by removing one from his diet at a time. I think my daughters were more extreme nightmares than night-terrors but I've learned and discovered that a lot of things can be improved or cured by a change in diet. Might be worth a shot ;)
The most common ones are wheat/flour, dairy, preservatives, artificial colors, soy, corn and chocolate.

God luck!

My son (who is now 12) had night terrors from the time he was 2 1/2 years old until the age of 10. They do grow out of it and as he got older it happened fewer times a week. We went through the exact experiences as you. Only as he got older there was more sleep walking or should I say running involved. We would find him screaming downstairs, in the bathroom,climbing walls, or even one time out in the back yard. (locks were then put into place) We never woke him up, just guided him back to bed. Never has he remebered any of them. The only thing I can say, besides hang in there...is that we found if we kept his routine exactly the same every night it seemed to help. Also if he ever went to bed late, or past his bed time they seemed worse. As with the other response, if we took him to the bathroom during an episode he didn't do it again that night. Hope this helps, you and your family are in my thoughts. Blessings.

I usually don't respond to these but I just felt your agony. My son went through the same thing. We got advice from our pedi. and it worked so I thought I would pass on to you. She had us wake him up after he had been asleep a few hours..not during an episode, before it ever started. I think we were putting him to bed around 8 and would wake him 11:30/12:00. We only had to do this a couple of times and it broke the cycle. Hope this helps and good luck.

I forget where I read about it, but one of the parenting websites mentioned night-blindness in children. I'm sure everyone else will or has already suggested a night light. I understand it is while he is sleeping as well? Maybe one of the dream turtles that plays soft music and a rotating light show might soothe him to sleep and help him while he sleeps?
Scroll down to the turtle one : )
http://cloudb.stores.yahoo.net/ongo1.html

Maybe some Celestial Seasoning Sleepy Time tea at night will also relax and soothe him further before he sleeps. Reading a short sweet story before bed might also help him have happy dreams and nothing scary.

Good luck!

I am a psychotherapist and have done extensive work with night terrors. The youngest child I worked with was 5. The literature shows that true night terrors are almost always the result of a psychological trauma. Yes, most people eventually grow out of it, but it can take 25 or more years. If they are true night terrors, therapy is one of the only helpful treatments. Please remember, they disrupt your sleep in between sleep stages (henceforth all the movement)and don't allow your body to get the rest it needs. It's not the same as losing 30 minutes of sleep at all. Your child will be extremely tired and deprived the day after a night terror. Please try and verify the diagnosis and get your baby extra help.
good luck!

My oldest had night terrors from a very early age through three. It was very difficult. The piercing screams tore me out of my sleep and i was always worried about waking her if she didn't wake on her own. I was a single mom at the time so I dealt with it on my own and lost a lot of sleep over it. I made sure to 'police' as much of her tv and movie watching as humanly possible. She was much older before she was allowed to watch any sort of violence due to the night terrors...I didn't want to give her poor little brain anything to feed off of. This included cartoons...thank god the cartoons started to change about then to the stuff you find now on noggin or nick jr...it made it a lot easier to make sure that she avoided images that might encourage the night terrors.

I also did what I could to keep her daily stress to a minimum. It was not easy...but luckily she was a very easy going baby (she turned into a hellion around age 4 - but was a perfect baby!)

I found that rubbing her back and talking softly to her during this worst of the night terrors often soothed her her back into sleep.

She has grown out of it...She does still occasionally have nightmares (she is 11 now) but it is nothing like when she was an infant through age three!!!!

Good Luck... ;-)

hi, R., my very active little girl did out grow the night terrors. they are frightening and were especially so until i read about them. my daughter is 16 now and i think she probably stopped having them before age 5. she was always very active during the day. my daughter also speaks another language when she talks in her sleep. these things are not very explainable. my daughter was always in the gifted and talented classes at school for her high spatial ability. she is an a/b student but rarely studies. she was always an extremely happy kid and the teen years dont seem as happy but seem normal from what i have read. i am looking forward to reading what other parents write to you about night terrors. my daughter also did not have them very often, maybe 5-8 total. i wouldnt want to use medication. you might have a very creative kid in your family! i know we artists are wired differently and i would like to learn more about night terrors from your responders. :-)
i am adding this: ironically there is a thing in the paper today about a little boy who had terrible nightmares and had all this information about a person who died in wwII as a figher pilot in japan who was shot down. anyway, the little 2-3 yr old was having nightmares about his plane crashing in wwII. i forgot to mention earlier that my little girl also would talk about past life things....
maybe there are more memories for these young souls. perhaps the trauma these little kids are experiencing can be from another existense. it would be interesting to find out if the kids with night terrors are the ones also with vivid unexplained memories from either a collective unconscious memory or from their own memories. might as well think out of the box.

hi R.--
we are just starting to go through this with our 4yo daughter. our son, who is now 6, had them for about a year around the time he was 2-3 yo and he grew out of them. with him, we would give him chamomile or sleepytime tea about an hour before bedtime, and then wake up him about 15 minutes before we anticipated the night terrors starting. we had moderate success with this--i think the precipitating factor was the birth of his sister. he grew out of it around the time our daughter turned 1 and he turned 3.

our daughter just began going through this a few months ago. the thing that seems to trigger hers is going to bed late, or generally having her sleep schedule thrown off. we just got back from a week's vacation about 10 days ago and both kids pretty much stayed up as late as they wanted to while we were away. the result after we got back home was an increase in night terrors. she is clearly not awake or aware of what is happening. she can't focus her eyes and can't answer questions or respond in any way to what is being said to her. she is usually screaming for me, not daddy, but does not recognize me at all. last week she hit me in the face and said "let go of me! you're not my mommy!" soon after that she went right back to sleep and slept the rest of the night without incident, and in the morning she had absolutely no memory of what had happened. she thought it was a joke i was playing on her and kept laughing and saying that was so silly.

we just had one about 2 hours ago and all she would say was "ouchie! ouchie!" but could not identify what was hurting. she accepted a cup of water, after which she went back to sleep.

i think you just have to be super patient with this and understand that it will eventually pass. i think it's great that you have tried aromatherapy for your son--can't hurt and it might help. have you tried massaging him before bed? he may sleep better, and more soundly. the tea generally helps both of our kids sleep better, so you might try that. make sure he goes potty before bed, too.

hope that helps--good luck and keep us posted on how you guys are doing!

My daughter had night terrors (she is now grown with a daughter of her own). I found that the best way to stop them was to be sure she was fully awake before going back to sleep. But it was hard to get her to wake up. I found that if I took her to the bathroom it helped. After she went to the bathroom, she would be awake and settled down. Then she could go back to sleep ... usually not waking again until morning.