Plea

[sammywol]

Does anyone out there have experience dealing with Night Terrors, especially with or as a child? DD is having fairly regular attacks of them, usually within 15 mins of first falling asleep. We are not getting much in the way of help here except for the advice to 'make the bedroom safe for her' because she tends to run out of the room looking for us

Comments

[irishkate]

God the poor kid - its back again full time? HUGS to you both and to her.

[marzut]

You may want to install a child gate in the new house until she is used to the layout. Wouldn't want her accidentally falling down the stairs if she is remembering the old layout in her sleepy state. I did read that you could try waking them before the episode occurs, but if it's only 15mins into sleep I'm not sure if that would be helpful.

[sammywol]

if it's only 15mins into sleep I'm not sure if that would be helpful. Exactly. The fact that it seems to hit just as she is entering deeper sleep makes it impossible to try that method and it is a very good one, one of the few.

I think we may have to do the gate thing and also disable the fire egress from the bedroom window which is less than ideal. What she does is a sort of sleep running and it often progresses and gets worse. Poor lamb!

[alaimacerc]

Being repeatedly woken up 5 or 10 minutes after dropping off sounds rather nightmarish in itself, really!

Nuclear option seems to be stuff like benzodiazepines and anti-depressants, but the general tactic of the medical profession seems, from what I've read, to be to repeatedly kick for touch until the child "grows out of them", while giving generalised advice like more rest, less stress, motherhood, and apple pie. Bleedin' quacks...

[sammywol]

Treatment for sleep disorders in general is very underdeveloped. No money in it I guess.

[mrs_dm]

I'm sure you've googled it, but night terrors is a disorder of non-REM sleep, while nightmares is a REM sleep thing.

Why is it impossible to try to wake her up 10-12 minutes into sleeping? Then let her go back to sleep. From what I gather, it's supposed to help by disrupting or "rebooting" her sleep cycle. Sounds worth a try.

[sammywol]

Because she has to go through that same stage of sleep again within a few minutes and it all repeats. Also it is variable in time so it can be 2 minutes after she nods off or 14. When she was tiny we had some nasty episodes but those always came between 10.30 and midnight so it was easy enough to rouse her around half ten. We are trying it on nights when we think it is going to happen but so far little joy.

[corylus_unbound]

Oh Lord... You have my sympathy.

I had a period of 3 months when youngest had night terrors and she just kept sitting up in bed screaming. That'd happen every 3 hours give or take. I tried the waking method but that just left both of us sleep deprived.

I tried to keep the day calm, the evening quiet and stress free which helped a little but eventually they stopped just as suddenly as they started.