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Night Terrors (Pavor nocturnus)


From KidsHalth.org:

During a night terror, a child might suddenly sit upright in bed and shout out or scream in distress. The child's breathing and heartbeat might be faster, he or she might sweat, thrash around, and act upset and scared. After a few minutes, or sometimes longer, a child simply calms down and returns to sleep.

Unlike nightmares, which kids often remember, kids won't have any memory of a night terror the next day because they were in deep sleep when it happened — and there are no mental images to recall.

This has been quite a fun one. Although Harry hasn't been bolting upright as many articles describe, he meets just about every other textbook criteria. His age, gender, and overall disposition seem to be congruent with all of the checklists.

As I'm writing this, Harry just rolled into his typical 10:30 moan & groan session that normally lasts about 5 minutes. He rolls around a little, makes some noise, but then generally goes right back to sleep... sometime a little more quickly with a gentle backrubbing.

I've always prided myself on being the one who can get him to sleep, and moreover to console him if he does have a bad dream. But this is something totally new, and the recommendations to deal with the Night Terrors are completely the opposite of what we've been trying to do to help.

As many say, never to try to wake a sleepwalker because of the massive disorientation that can occur afterwards, so they say to not try to rouse a child experiencing Night Terrors. Case in point, as we have been dealing with this (before reading up of course), was to initially try to console him and gently (then not-so-gently) try to wake him up.

After literally walking him around his bedroom at 3 in the morning, eyes tightly shut and crying incessantly, he'd finally open them up, eventually slow down, and then become incredibly confused... "I didn't get to take my tub" or "I didn't get to watch a show today"

We've been doing our best since Kim came across all of these articles to try to eliminate the variables: earlier to bed, back to routine, make sure he's got something in his belly, calming bath before bed, you name it. He luckily hasn't had one since Saturday night (a particularly bad one right as I was trying to leave for Hockey -- which didn't help matters) that ended up with him and Kim sharing the couch until I got home, but having to watch him cry himself past the uber-bad part of the bad dream is going to be TOUGH.

I didn't do well way back with the Nebulizer, I was absolutely a wreck at Children's last summer. Although I can turn a deaf-ish ear to the inane crying for no reason, it's the pained-sounding wails that I truly cannot handle. However, if it's going to keep me from getting another stray elbow or foot to the face while tryingt o wake him up, I guess it will be worth it.