Many parents assume that nightmares and night terrors are the same thing, but they are not.  Nightmares generally occur in the second half of the night and you usually will not hear about them from your child until they have had the nightmare and have woken up.  Only 1% of the population has true night terrors, distinguishing them from nightmares.  Night terrors can be terrifying for the whole family, especially when a toddler first starts having them. 

Understanding Night Terrors 

Night terrors are not unlike something that some children experience called a partial or confusional arousal, but more intense than that.  This is where a child sort of gets stuck between states of sleep and they are partially aroused but confused.  In some cases the child will simply sit up and look through their parents with glassy eyes.  The only difference between this and night terrors is that night terrors are very intense.  Instead of just sitting up and looking around like a normal confusional arousal, the child will generally wake up and scream.  The child may be inconsolable, sweating, and unable to control. 

During night terrors, the sheer terror that your toddler is feeling will be clear on his or her face.  Try as you might, you will not be able to get your toddler to respond to you when you ask what is wrong.  It is not uncommon for the child to have a racing heart and even run away from parents or siblings that try to calm the child. 

Night terrors are not common, but they tend to run in families along with confusional arousals and sleepwalking.  These are all disturbances of the sleep and are generally caused by lack of sleep or a different sleep schedule than is usually followed.  While terrifying for the parents, a child usually does not remember the night terror when asked about it later.  Luckily, these incidences usually don’t last more than ten minutes, and they are often over in less than a minute.   

With practice, parents can learn how to diffuse the situation instead of getting the child more worked up.  Turning on lights and talking in soothing voices can help your child calm down and get back to sleep, even if they don’t wake all the way up.  It’s just important to make sure that your child does not hurt him or herself by running into furniture and through windows.  Though rare, this has happened because some children have a very intense fight or flight response and they will literally run in terror.  Thankfully, most children who experience night terrors grow out of them; though some studies have shown that children who experience night terrors go on to have other sleep disorders.
 

Posted in Toddler Time

Related Articles: