Night Terrors

Night terrors are something which affect numerous children including my own son, so I thought this post might help if you too are having problems in this area. My son Archie suffered with night terrors really badly. At one point he was having several every night which was exhausting for all of us. Night terrors can occur when a child is stressed or worried or when there is a change in circumstances (such as moving house) but they can also occur spontaneously.

A night terror is different from a nightmare because with a nightmare, the child wakes up upset after a bad dream & wants to be comforted. With a night terror the child has no idea what is going on. They are effectively still asleep while crying out, screaming, hitting, kicking, biting, being very aggressive, yet have no idea they are doing it. As a mother, the thing you want to do is comfort your child if he/she is in distress. The frustrating thing about a night terror is that although your child is distressed, no amount of comforting will help, and in fact he/she is likely to push you away or become more distressed when you try to help them. The only thing you can do in this situation is try to keep your child from hurting himself/herself. The night terror will eventually stop and it will be completely obvious when it has because the child changes completely. They are no longer distressed, but calm, and confused about why they are awake, and why you are there. They have no recollection of what just happened, and will at that point normally settle back to sleep.

If your child is suffering from multiple night terrors or a night terror every night, I can recommend a solution. Our GP told us to try this and said it was the only thing she had found to work with night terrors. Basically, you wake your child up about 30 minutes before the time they normally wake up with a night terror. Give him/her a drink of milk and settle them back to sleep. This simple technique breaks the sleep cycle and is enough to stop the child entering the phase of sleep where the night terror usually occurs. This worked amazingly with Archie, and we found that he was so sleepy when we tried to wake him that we didn't need the milk to get him back to sleep, he simply fell straight back to sleep again. In fact we often couldn't wake him up but just rousing him was enough to stop the night terrors. After a few nights of doing this, Archie's night terrors stopped. I'd highly recommend this method and hope it works for you too.