Posts Tagged ‘baby night terror’

Welcome to part 3 of the Night Terrors and Nightmares Series. If you are just joining us, you might want to start with part 1 where I go over night terrors in babies and toddlers.

Our babies and toddlers sleep deeper than we do and that’s why night terrors and confusional events are so common among them. Their drive for deep sleep is so strong that when they partially awaken, they stay half asleep. So, how can we reduce night terrors and what should we do during a night terror?

Night Terror Solutions

• Avoid over-tiredness as that makes the drive to deep sleep even stronger and it’s harder for your baby or toddler to have normal partial wakings that we all have.

• Remove sleep associations that require your input. This gives your baby or toddler a reason to wake up more than usual.

• Remove noises or lights that can give your baby or toddler a reason to wake.

• Make a consistent sleep schedule. Babies and toddlers with inconsistent schedules can get more out of sync due to their internal clocks not knowing whether to be awake or asleep.

• Make sure bedtime is set at the right time so your toddler is not lying there having too much time to think and worry. She might call out for you to come back to her room and during the night, she might continue to do that for every waking.

• If your child has a night terror or confusional event at the same time every night, you can try to partially awaken him 10 minutes or so before the night terror would start in order to break the cycle. Night terrors happen during the first two sleep cycles of the night (if they are happening in the early morning you should talk to your doctor), so you can set an alarm clock and attempt to awaken him.

Illnesses and certain medications can also cause confusional events. It can also be hereditary or that some babies and toddlers are simply born more prone to be erratic sleepers.

It is important for you to tackle the things you can have control over, especially sleep associations. If your toddler constantly “needs” you to “help” her fall asleep, she may start to partially awake more and more to get that recreated and it can make night terrors worse.

Unfortunately, other than these factors, a child’s day-to-day activities won’t tell you how that night might be because night terrors can vary from day to day. The only thing that is a good indicator is that overtired toddlers have more night terrors than rested children.

If your baby or toddler has mild confusional events and it isn’t very disruptive to the family, take heart that he will most likely outgrow them by five or six years old. You may not know your neighbor’s child has the same types of nightly events, but it is common for toddlers to have confusional events, even when they yell scary things and according to Ferber, at least 15 percent of all children sleepwalk at least once. You can do what you can to limit over-tiredness, disruptions to schedule, and remove sleep associations, but you do not need to consider professional help for mild occurrences, even if they happen a lot.

If your toddler has frequent semi-intense sleep terrors, you may want to talk to your doctor. You also want to talk to your doctor if your child has very intense and even dangerous sleep terrors, even if they don’t happen often. You obviously don’t want something to happen that harms your child or another family member. If sleep terrors persist into older children, sometimes medication is prescribed, so talk to your doctor.

What to do during a night terror

Nothing. That’s right. During a night terror or confusional event, it’s best to let them run their course. You will often just make things worse and make it longer if you try to wake your baby or toddler (and you won’t be able to until it’s over anyway). If your toddler or preschooler is sleep walking, you do want to take her back to bed, of course, and if it’s a calm confusional event, this will not be a problem. You also want to watch your child to make sure she does not harm herself. Let the sleep terror or confusional event run its course and then promptly let her fall back to sleep. If you try to talk to her too much, you might make her wake up more and encourage more wakings. Keep in mind she will not remember anything anyway.

If these solutions don’t solve your night terrors or at least puts you at ease that they are common and your child will likely outgrow them, please contact me! If you’d like to read more about night terrors, Ferber has excellent and detailed information in his book, too.

Do you have any night terror tips?

Welcome to part 2 of the Night Terrors and Nightmares Series. If you are just joining us, you might want to start with part 1 where I go over night terrors in babies and toddlers.

What are Nightmares?

Nightmares are very scary dreams. They usually start as a normal dream and then they take a turn for the worst. We don’t remember every dream or nightmare. It’s only when we wake up at the end do we remember them, even if we just wake up briefly.

What age do nightmares start?

This, they don’t know for sure, but they do know by one year old, a child can definitely have a nightmare. It makes sense that it can and does happen sooner, but it’s hard to say how complex a dream can be at one day, one month, or 6 months old, but since nightmares occur during our “active sleep” (during rapid-eye-movement (REM) for those who want to know a bit more about the technical terms), it is possible even your newborn can have a dream and therefore, a nightmare. Newborns spend a good amount of time in this stage of sleep.

Since a one-year old can’t talk or express himself that well, it’s hard to know just how complex his dreams are, but by two years old, when the imagination has really started to come alive, nightmares can get very specific. However, at this age, although they might understand a nightmare is just a dream and have idea about what a dream is, when he wakes up, he might not fully understand the dream is over and still remain scared for a bit later.

As your child gets older, the understanding between dream and reality will get better and by 5 years old, she will have a much bigger grasp of the difference between dream and reality. Even when your child is older, it doesn’t mean the dreams won’t be scary, but they may not always need you to come for help (which I’m sure is a bittersweet feeling).

All children are different in their development, so the age that your child may or may not need you after a nightmare will vary.

Why do we have nightmares?

Everyone has nightmares at one time or another, but those with more emotional tension or upset during the day will probably have more nightmares, because nightmares usually come about from the daily struggles in your day. This will also depend on how sensitive the dreamer is. Nightmares are a very normal part of your child’s development and working through daily’s life struggles.

Night terrors vs. Nightmares

We learned last week when I described night terrors, that it’s important to distinguish night terrors from nightmares because how we resolve them will be very different. Night terrors or other confusional events will not result in your child being fully awake afterward, but with a nightmare, he will be and he will be clearly frightened.

With Night terrors you usually figure out your child is having one in the middle of it happening, but in a nightmare, you will only know it happened after it’s over and your child is awake and scared. It is also important to note that nightmares usually occur in the second half of the night while night terrors typically happen within the first few hours of the night. It is often hard to settle or calm a child having a night terror and he isn’t fully awake barely responding to you, but once it’s over he goes back to sleep quickly. After a nightmare your child will feel comforted by you, but may or may not go back to sleep as easily depending on the age of your child and how scary the dream was.

Nightmares can be very scary and in the final part of the series, I will discuss ways to try to limit night terrors and nightmares, how to handle each when you’re in the thick of things, and how to discourage any bad habits from forming.

Share your child’s nightmares

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!