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How to wake child from night terror


Night Terrors (for Parents) - Nemours KidsHealth

What Are Night Terrors?

Most parents have comforted their child after the occasional nightmare. But if your child has ever had what's known as a night terror (or sleep terror), his or her fear was likely inconsolable, no matter what you tried.

A night terror is a sleep disruption that seems similar to a nightmare, but is far more dramatic. Though night terrors can be alarming for parents who witness them, they're not usually cause for concern or a sign of a deeper medical issue.

What Are the Signs and Symptoms of Night Terrors?

During a night terror, a child might:

  • suddenly sit upright in bed
  • shout out or scream in distress
  • have faster breathing and a quicker heartbeat
  • be sweating
  • thrash around
  • act upset and scared

After a few minutes, or sometimes longer, the 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.

What Causes Night Terrors?

Night terrors are caused by over-arousal of the central nervous system (CNS) during sleep.

Sleep happens in several stages. We have dreams — including nightmares — during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage. Night terrors happen during deep non-REM sleep. A night terror is not technically a dream, but more like a sudden reaction of fear that happens during the transition from one sleep stage to another.

Night terrors usually happen about 2 or 3 hours after a child falls asleep, when sleep moves from the deepest stage of non-REM sleep to lighter REM sleep. Usually this transition is a smooth one. But sometimes, a child becomes upset and frightened — and that fear reaction is a night terror.

Who Gets Night Terrors?

Night terrors have been noted in kids who are:

  • overtired, ill, or stressed
  • taking a new medicine
  • sleeping in a new environment or away from home
  • not getting enough sleep
  • having too much caffeine

Night terrors are relatively rare — they happen in only 3%–6% of kids, while almost every child will have a nightmare occasionally. Night terrors usually happen in kids between 4 and 12 years old, but have been reported in babies as young as 18 months. They seem to be a little more common among boys.

Some kids may inherit a tendency for night terrors — about 80% who have them have a family member who also had them or sleepwalking (a similar type of sleep disturbance).

A child might have a single night terror or several before they stop. Most of the time, night terrors simply disappear on their own as the nervous system matures.

How Can I Help My Child?

Night terrors can be very upsetting for parents, who might feel helpless when they can't comfort their child. The best way to handle a night terror is to wait it out patiently and make sure your child doesn't get hurt if thrashing around. Kids usually will settle down and return to sleep on their own in a few minutes.

It's best not to try to wake kids during a night terror. This usually doesn't work, and kids who do wake are likely to be disoriented and confused, and may take longer to settle down and go back to sleep.

There's no treatment for night terrors, but you can help prevent them. Try to:

  • reduce your child's stress
  • create a bedtime routine that's simple and relaxing
  • make sure your child gets enough rest
  • help your child from becoming overtired
  • don't let your child stay up too late

If your child has a night terror around the same time every night, you can try waking him or her up about 15–30 minutes before then to see if that helps prevent it.

Understanding night terrors can ease your worry — and help you get a good night's sleep yourself. But if night terrors happen repeatedly, talk to your doctor about whether a referral to a sleep specialist is needed.

Night terrors: Why they happen and what to do about them

What are night terrors?

Night terrors are a type of sleep disturbance. A child having a night terror may suddenly bolt upright in bed, cry, scream, moan, mumble, and thrash about with his eyes wide open without being truly awake. Because he's caught in a sort of a twilight zone between being asleep and awake, he's unaware of your presence and isn't likely to respond to anything you say or do.

Researchers think of night terrors as mysterious glitches in the usually smooth transitions we make between sleep stages each night. An episode can last anywhere from a few minutes to almost an hour, and when it's over your child may abruptly fall back to sleep with no memory of the incident.

Night terrors are more common in young children – from toddlers to grade-schoolers. A study of almost 2,000 children found that 40 percent of children between ages 2 1/2 to 6 years old experienced night terrors. Kids often grow out of them by about age 12.

How are night terrors different from nightmares?

If your child has a night terror, she won't remember it. On the other hand, a nightmare leaves your child truly awake. Not only can she remember her dream and sometimes talk about it, but she may also seek out and feel comforted by your presence.

Also, children commonly have night terrors during the first third of the night, during deep non-dream (non-REM) sleep. Children have nightmares during dream (REM) sleep, which usually happens during the last third of the night.

According to sleep expert Jodi A. Mindell, author of Sleeping Through the Night, the easiest way to tell the difference between a night terror and a nightmare is to ask yourself who's more upset about it the next morning. "If your child is more agitated, she had a nightmare. If you're the one who's disturbed, she probably had a night terror," says Mindell.

In other words, the "terror" of a night terror lingers far longer in the parent who watched it than in the child who lived it.

What should I do if my child has a night terror?

Don't try to wake him. And expect that your efforts to comfort him will be rebuffed – a child having a night terror really can't be calmed down, and if you try to hold him it may make him wilder.

It's unsettling to witness a night terror, but unless your child is in danger of hurting himself, don't attempt to physically comfort him. Just speak calmly, put yourself between him and anything dangerous (the headboard of his bed, for example), and wait for the storm to pass.

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Before you go to bed, take the same precautions you would for a sleepwalker because children who have night terrors might also sleepwalk or tumble out of bed in the grip of a night terror. Pick up any toys or objects on the floor, install a gate at the top of the stairs, and make sure windows and outside doors are locked.

What causes night terrors, and can they be prevented?

There's no definitive way to prevent night terrors because no one knows exactly what causes them. What is known is that, on their own, night terrors don't mean a child has a psychological problem or is even upset about something.

Some factors make night terrors more likely – if your child has a fever or isn't getting enough sleep, for example. Solving any other sleep problems your child has, such as getting up in the middle of the night, and making sure she has a regular bedtime and gets enough hours of sleep may help ward off night terrors.

Certain medications or caffeine also can contribute to night terrors. Children are also more likely to have them if someone else in their family has night terrors or another sleep disorder, such as sleepwalking.

In some cases, night terrors can be triggered by sleep apnea, a serious but correctable disorder in which enlarged tonsils and adenoids (normal tissue in the throat) block airway passages during sleep, making it difficult to breathe and disrupting a child's sleep throughout the night.

Research suggests that certain conditions that keep your child from getting enough rest, such as restless legs syndrome or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), may also trigger night terrors. Check with your child's doctor if you think one of these conditions might be contributing to your child's night terrors.

What is a scheduled awakening?

If you notice that your child's night terrors happen about the same time during the night, you can try something called scheduled awakening. This simply means that you gently and briefly wake your child about 15 or 20 minutes before she usually has a night terror. Some experts think this technique can change your child's sleep state enough to prevent a night terror. When done repeatedly, your child may learn to wake up automatically to avoid the night terror.

Scheduled awakening hasn't been well tested in preventing night terrors, however, and there's always the possibility that waking your child around the time of a night terror might trigger one.

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Children's sleep and nightmares from a pediatrician's point of view

At least once in our lives, we all have encountered a situation where a child wakes up at night crying or screaming and runs to the parent's bed. What happened? Had a bad dream? Or a nightmare? Is it night terror?

In these matters, we will try to deal with the pediatrician of the Odrex Medical House Ekaterina Nikolaenko.

An important criterion for the physical and mental health and development of a child is his emotional state. It affects the development of perception of the world, attention, memory, thinking, imagination. In turn, the emotional state of the child depends on many factors, but one of the main ones is the quantity and quality of sleep.

What are nightmares and night terrors, why do they appear?

A nightmare is a bad dream that causes a child to wake up in a state of fright. This is a consequence and reflection of the emotional conflicts of active life. For example, in a one-year-old baby, this is some recent event - a blood test, a bee sting, a careless fall.

Night terror is a partial awakening with confusion (dreaming, sleepwalking). The child may cry, wave his arms, scream, but does not wake up completely. When addressing a child, he may not answer, he seems to look at you, but does not see. Night terror or terror is a fairly rare sleep disorder commonly seen in preschool children.

Night terrors can appear in children from 6 months of age, for example, in the form of prolonged crying that is difficult to soothe. In children going to kindergarten or school, this condition manifests itself in the form of hysteria, in adolescents - a scream, and at this time the child can sit up sharply in bed.

The older the child becomes, the more complex the fears - separation from parents, fear of losing love and approval, fear of disappointment. In adolescents, these are anxieties about the future, experiments with new value systems, objections, personal desires and assessment by their parents.

The appearance of sleep disorders in a child can be influenced by watching horror films at night, strange cartoons, showdown in front of children or scenes of domestic violence in any form. All this leads to an increase in the degree of anxiety, and then manifests itself in the form of horrors (and not only).

As you know, each stage of growing up has its own fears, and they are subsequently expressed in dreams and nightmares.

What should I do if my child has a nightmare?

A frightened child should not be embarrassed, blamed or shouted at.

  • If it is a night terror, do not try to wake the baby, you should speak in a low voice, you can gently take his hand and take him to bed. Night terror usually occurs 1-4 hours after falling asleep, when the slow-wave sleep phase is at its deepest. As a rule, the attack goes away on its own and its duration can be different, sometimes up to 45 minutes. After such an attack, the child quickly falls asleep again, but does not remember anything.
  • If it's sleepwalking, make sure the child doesn't hurt himself.
  • If this is just a bad dream, you need to hug, reassure, talk to the child, remind him that this is just a dream, encourage his story.

Can I self-prescribe drugs to improve sleep?

Only a specialist can determine the degree of anxiety and other mental disorders, therefore, the appointment of any sleep-improving drugs is possible only after consulting a pediatrician or a narrow specialist. Any drug, even innocent at first glance, can further disrupt sleep.

How to improve children's sleep?

Children are often afraid to fall asleep alone in the dark. To relieve the child of fears, you can leave a small lamp on until the moment of deep sleep.

Seek medical advice if the horrors persist, become more frequent and are accompanied by screams. If you have nightmares weekly or more often, this is an occasion to contact a pediatric neurologist, neuropsychologist, or psychologist.

Ekaterina Sergeevna sums up: “Night fears arise due to increased anxiety, the causes of which we have partially analyzed above. You can find additional information in the books that I myself read and recommend to you, these are:
• H. Karp “Children's dream. Simple solutions for parents”
• R. Ferber “Child's sleep. Solving all problems”

Ekaterina Nikolaenko can sign a declaration for a child. The contract can be concluded at the Odrex Medical House at the address: Raskidaylovskaya street, 69/71. You need to take a number of documents with you: children under 14 years old - a birth certificate, older ones - a passport and an identification code.

You can sign up for a consultation through a mobile application, through the form on the website or by calling: +38 (048) 730-00-30, +38 (096) 380-30-30, +38 (063) 380-30-30, +38 (066) 380-30-30.

Night terrors in children - article "BabySleep" about nightmares and frights in children

09/29/2015

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Anna Bondarenko

Anna Bondarenko

Child and family psychologist-psychotherapist

Adult son and schoolgirl daughter

You will probably be surprised to learn that night terrors and nightmares are different phenomena. What is the difference?

Child's crisis calendar

Night terrors:

  • Usually occur in the first 2 hours after falling asleep, last 5–10 minutes.
  • Characteristic at the age of 2-4 years, as well as in the period of 6-12 years.

Night fears look like this: the child screams in a dream, the parents find the baby sitting in bed with his eyes open, with an expression of fright on his face, trembling or sweating. He does not answer questions addressed, after waking up he remains disoriented for some time, thinking is confused (usually the child does not wake up at all).

The child is often aggressive when trying to hold him or wake him up. Usually in the morning the child does not remember this episode.

Do not wake up the child, he will calm down by himself. Just be there and make sure that the child is not injured while throwing. This was not a “bad dream”, but an altered state, often caused by severe stress, chronic disruption of the regime, long trips.

Night terrors also occur when the body temperature rises.

How to help :

Early bedtime recommended, longer sleep duration. Night terrors go away with age.

Night terrors:

  • Occur in the second half of the night.
  • The peak of nightmares falls on periods of age crises: 4-5, 7-8, 12-14, 17 years.

The child dreams of monsters or the pursuit of him, the experiences are very realistic. The child wakes up crying or screaming. The child is frightened, sometimes it is difficult to calm him down. It is especially difficult to convince him that he has nothing to fear.

It is worth waking up the child and calming him down. There is no need to persuade him that dreaming monsters do not exist, for children they are quite real.

How to help :