Baby / Toddler Night Terrors and Nightmares Series: Part 1
Posted by Nicole on June 30th, 2009
Welcome to part 1 of my Baby / Toddler Night Terrors and Nightmares series where I will discuss the different types of night terrors and nightmares your baby or toddler can have, the age they start, the age they stop, the difference between the two and how you should handle each, because the way you handle each is different. We’ll kick off this series by discussing night terrors (aka sleep terrors).
Night Terrors – What are they?
Many people use the term night terrors to describe a lot of different behavior at night. Whether or not you believe in cry it out or its many variations, Ferber (where the term “ferberizing” comes from) is the director of The Center for Pediatric Sleep Disorders in Boston, MA and clears up that there are things called “confusional events” (or partial wakings) and something else called “sleep terrors”. I will describe each of them so you will be able to know the difference. As always, I try to limit too much sleep science talk because it’s really technical (and pretty boring if you are not obsessed with sleep as much as I am), but if you are interested in more I highly recommend reading Ferber’s book who does a thorough job in explaining everything.
You might remember beginning around 4 months old, when we first fall asleep, it’s a transition into the deepest sleep of the whole night. This process takes approximately 30 minutes from bedtime for babies as they go into deep sleep faster than adults. The first sleep cycle lasts about 60 to 90 minutes and your baby (and you) will wake briefly as she transitions into the second sleep cycle, which is also deep sleep. The first few hours of sleep of the night is (supposed to be) the deepest. It is during this transition between sleep cycles that you wake briefly. You might roll over or you might pull the cover up over you. It is usually brief and you go right back to sleep. This is NORMAL to wake briefly. Sometimes, however, this process is not so smooth and not so quick and explains why your baby sometimes wakes up crying. Or, do they?
Confusional events typically happen within the first two sleep cycles or between 1 and 4 hours after bedtime. What happens is part of your mind is trying to go back to sleep and part of your mind is trying to wake up and they are both trying to win. There is a wide spectrum as to how that might play out. Your baby might moan, mumble, fuss, or move around for a few minutes and go right back to sleep. That would be a mild confusional event. This is when most people are sleep talking. People think this is when someone is dreaming, but in reality, this is during a NON-dream state. This explains why my husband doesn’t remember what I’m talking about when I tell him something he said the night before.
If the event is a bit more intense, your toddler might sleep walk. She may walk up to you and seem to see right through you. Her eyes might be open, but she is still mostly asleep. Most kids won’t ever remember this happening. It could be a bit more pronounced such as a child jumping out of bed and moving around the room. She might seem upset or confused and may even say things like “No! Stop!” but not really appear too frightened. She might not recognize you and might push you away if you try to hug or touch her. It will likely be virtually impossible to either wake her or console her.
If your baby or toddler (or you) have a true night terror (or sleep terror), it will be more sudden than a confusional event that builds up gradually. Your child will do something like sit straight up in bed and let out a bloodcurdling scream. Her heart will beat fast and she might be very hot and sweaty. She will probably look very terrified and may be screaming things like “Stop!”, “No!”, “Help!” It usually lasts from 1 to 5 minutes and if she wakes at the end will probably not remember anything. It is rare, but some kids will jump out of bed and run around and “run away” from whatever appears to be chasing her. Again, this is very rare.
Night Terrors – Age they start and stop
Partial wakings and confusional events are normal and happen from birth. The “confusion” comes in when your body’s drive to sleep is met with your body’s drive to wake. An example is when you are asleep and you hear the baby crying. You get up, walk to her room and start to feed her before you are fully awake. You might not even remember how you got into the room. Part of your mind was awake and part of it was asleep. If you are confused, you might go in the bathroom instead of the baby’s room and then wonder what you’re doing up when you hear the baby crying and finally your brain starts to wake up. From birth, there will be times during sleep transitions that your baby’s drive to sleep is being challenged by the drive to wake up and your baby might cry or fuss between sleep cycles. This is why it’s important to not interrupt the process of going back to sleep, if you can help it. We want the drive to sleep to win. But, just as an alarm clock is meant to wake you up fully, we, parents, wake our babies up by getting them up too soon, sometimes.
True night or sleep terrors most often happen to adolescents and preadolescents (so 10 to 18 years old), though younger kids might have similar events and of course, everyone is unique. The good thing is that most likely if your baby or toddler appears to be having a night terror, most likely it is a confusional event in which he is not truly frightened. And, in either case, they typically don’t remember either.
Night Terrors – How long they last
Confusional events and night terrors last from a few minutes to up to 40 minutes and typically not longer than that. These are NOT dreams and explains why your child won’t even remember them in the morning. It also explains why you may not be able to comfort him if he is crying or screaming. Night terrors are usually a shorter 1 to 5 minutes.
To recap, confusional events generally occur in the beginning of the night as your baby or toddler is coming out of deep sleep and transitioning into the next sleep cycle. He might roll over, moan, mumble, move around a bit, fuss / cry a bit and typically go right back to sleep. If he is having a more intense event, he might stand up in his crib, get out of bed and come into your room. A night terror, typically starting around 10 years old, will be much more intense beginning suddenly and ending within a few minutes. Later in the series, I’ll explain how to minimize the occurrences and how you should handle night terrors.
Stay tuned for part 2 where I will explain what nightmares are, when they occur at night, what age they start and when they stop in babies and toddlers. If you haven’t already, you might want to get free updates in your e-mail inbox or via your favorite feed reader, so you won’t miss a part!
Part 2: Baby / Toddler Night Terrors and Nightmares
Does your baby or toddler have confusional events or night terrors? Tell us about it!
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June 30th, 2009
Our son had night terrors and the pediatrician told us that it’s most common in boys with about 7% having them and they usually grow out of them by age 6 or 7. Our son still has a couple of them but they have reduced significantly. There was a time he was have a few each night.
We were advised to try to wake him up before we anticipated the night terror so as to disrupt the sleep cycle and help him start a new one so he might skip it all together.
We were walking zombies and just did the best we could to survive.
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July 2nd, 2009
@Aruni Oh that sounds rough! Did the disrupt-the-sleep-cycle actually work? I’m glad they’ve gotten better, at least! Thanks for commenting.
July 15th, 2009
My sweet daughter who is 2 has been having night terrors for some time now. I think her first was when she was 12 months. However her terrors last for hours. She is inconsolable for hours I think the longest period was about a 3 hour stretch in the middle of the night. She wakes up screaming throwing herself around and so forth. If you try to do anything it makes it worse. Eventually she calms down and crawls into your lap, but man it can be soo rough.
July 23rd, 2009
My 3 year old (middle child – older sister 6, younger brother 15mos) has never been a good sleeper. About two months ago she started waking up screaming about 2 hours after falling asleep (around 8:30pm) and then again between 2-3am. These episodes would last from 5 min to an hour. The 5 minute one being rare. Mostly she screams, shakes, stiffins, and bends around in bed looking like she can’t get comfortable. This usually goes on for 30 minutes then she falls back asleep until the 2am episode. We originally thought molars, growth spurt ect.. Took her to our doctor, he said it was mental, to her to an ear, nose, throat Dr. to rule out sleep apnea or anything else, she was physically fine according to him, so we have been researching night terrors. We have tried everything, solid bedtime routine, no caffine at all during the day, night time foods that promote sleep ect.. We have not tried waking her 15 minutes before it usually happens. We are starting that tonight. Will let you know how it goes. Does anyone have any other suggestions? This is really starting to effect our everyday life, my wife and I have not slept more that 4 hours for the last 2 months. Any suggestions welcome.
August 7th, 2009
@Randi Oh wow! I’ve never heard of night terrors being hours long!
That sounds really rough. I’ll have to read up on that. Thanks for sharing!
August 7th, 2009
@Kevin How did waking 15 minutes early work out for you? Are you also making sure bedtime is sufficiently early?
August 11th, 2009
We just had our first. My little man will be two next week. He just woke up and started running around the room screaming at me and my husband and shoving us away….he had this animalistic look in his eyes and he was TERRIFIED and I WAS TERRIFIED. I have NEVER seen anything like that! It lasted a FULL 10 minutes……..wow, I hope it never happens again. Eventually I was able to soothe him and hold him and offer him a paci. He is now laying in bed watching lullabyes….
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September 3rd, 2009
@Paige Oh wow! That sounds scary! I hope it never happens again!!
March 17th, 2010
My 19 month old girl woke last night at midnight, screaming and in a state as her 18 week old brother shares her bedroom i took her downstairs she was acting like a zombie and was really sweating. she got in a state as she was determined to put her shoes on so in the end i helped her put them on!!
she then calmed down and was just lying on the sofa then she got up and dragged her little table and chair to me so i thought she must be hungry so made her a slice of toast which she ate. she then picked up her dolly and was detemined to feed the doll. I finally done a bottle for her and gave it to her in bed and she finally went to sleep around 3.15!
The last week she has been doing strange things like this in the night but last night was the worse.
She goes to bed every night easily at 8pm happy to be in bed and she also has couple of naps in day
Sorry for long message I feel like a zombie myself as my baby wanted feeding at 6!
any advice please?!
April 8th, 2010
My son just turned one year old on Tuesday, April 6th. He is my whole world and has my entire heart so when he woke up the first time just screaming his head off, my heart fell out of my chest. I picked him up as calmly as I could and tried to calm him down but he was inconsolable. He grabs at me, clutching my shirt, rubbing his face in my chest, big tears running down his face, and clearly ASLEEP. This scares me to death. When we try to wake him, it is very difficult. My husband and I both had night terrors as a child but not when we were this young. This is my first child and I am at a loss for how to deal with this. We have tried any suggestions from my mom and his mom and our pediatrician seems to think he is not having night terrors but based on the distinction on this website it is definitely a night terror. My mom found this sight and I am thankful. PLEASE! Any help on how we can handle this will be most appreciative because it seems that when he has one they are getting longer in duration.
April 8th, 2010
P.S. Something else I failed to mention is that he will normally take two naps a day and is ready for bed around 9 or 9:30pm and sleeps most of the night, waking once for a bottle around 3 or 4 sometimes, not always. He was on such a schedule you could set your watch by him. The last few days he has stayed up for 6 hours or longer at a time and took one nap during the day and even fell asleep at 7:45 pm one night. totally off his schedule. could this have anything to do with the terrors.
April 9th, 2010
Hi Christie,
I can understand how it must be very difficult for you and your husband when your son has one of these episodes. Sometimes night terrors can be linked to a variety of things such as overtiredness, illness or medication. It sounds like perhaps your son may be working on transitioning to one nap. I would recommend you take a look at this post about 12 month old schedule (http://www.babysleepsite.com/tag/12-month-schedule/) and see if you can work on transitioning him to a set one nap schedule that gets him to bed a little earlier than 9 or 9:30. With one nap a day and a fluctuating bedtime, it is possible that he is overtired and this is could be contributing to the night terror episodes. You can also contact Nicole for an email consult for additional help and ideas on how to deal with these and you can find this listed under Products.
May 5th, 2010
I am the grandmother and frequent babysitter of a 22 month old who started having something that resembles night terrors a month or so ago. He is sleeping, starts screaming, yell “no, no” and is often inconsolable for 30 minutes.
With the last episode, he screamed my name. Now, my son and daughter in law thinks that I have done something to him that has caused him to be terrified. They do not want me to keep him again.
Needless to say, this is far from the truth. I don’t believe in corporal punishment at all, and have a tendency to be too lenient, probably. We have (with their approval) been trying to take him off the pacifier, but have given that up. Could this be the cause? Do you think I am responsible for this?
May 7th, 2010
Hi Karen,
Sounds like a difficult situation. It would be really hard to say what might be causing the night terrors or if it’s just a phase that he’s going through. Hopefully, it’s something that he outgrows or phases out of and that you and your son & daughter in law can find some way to work out the care for their son with regards to your involvement. Perhaps you could recommend that they read this post as way to better understand what their son might be going through.
June 17th, 2010
I think my daughter had a night terror an hour or so ago, and she’s only two months old. She was asleep, and then suddenly–like someone had flipped a switch–she was screaming and crying. I changed her diaper and fed her, but she only had an ounce, and then she fell asleep again.
In fact, she sounded exactly like she did when she got her two-month vaccinations a few days ago, and I wonder whether it was a night terror or a nightmare in which she was reliving the vaccinations.