Night Terrors.

I have experience as my dd did this. It started when she was close to two and stopped when she was 3. It's scary to see this as a parent. All I could really do was sit with her and talk to her to try to console her. Eventually she would wake up on her own.

My neighbor lady would get them. We went tent trailer camping with them once and she had one. Freaky!   She sat up screaming in the middle of the night and I could have sworn something was going to come flying across the tent.

My oldest had night terrors starting at about 3 years old. They were terrifying for us and we quickly learned that we just had to ride them out by sitting quietly in her room to make sure she didn't hurt herself. They usually lasted about an hour and happened when she was overtired and had been overstimulated during the day.

The terrors morphed into sleepwalking at about 8 years old and gradually diminished as she became a pre-teen. She has always been, and still is, a terrible sleeper.

My husband gets these, but rarely. My neighbor's DD also gets them. When we compared, it turned out that the common theme was a full day of physical activity, and being super tired at night. For example, staying up late to pack for camping/glamping, then waking up early and driving 4 hours, unpacking, taking a hike, swimming at night, staying up late, having a few beers, playing cards, then going to bed. On a day like this, I need to make sure i go to sleep at the same time as DH, so that I can wake him up when he starts screaming.

My oldest had them when he was about 2. Scary for all of us

When a child has night terrors they appear to be awake, but they aren't. DD had them semi-regularly from age 2 to 4 usually about 3 hours after falling asleep. The most amazing thing to me is she shared a room with DS and never woke him during an episode.

This article explains exactly what we experienced with DD. They are terrifying as a parent but DD remembers nothing of them.

A night terror is a sleep disruption that seems similar to a nightmare, but with a far more dramatic presentation. 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.

and

Night terrors are caused by over-arousal of the central nervous system (CNS) during sleep. This may happen because the CNS (which regulates sleep and waking brain activity) is still maturing. Some kids may inherit a tendency for this over-arousal — about 80% who have night terrors have a family member who also experienced them or sleepwalking (a similar type of sleep disturbance).

I was a sleepwalker as a child and even left the house once to ride my bike.

My fiancé has PTSD and has had horrendous night terrors!  

At night he’s dangerous! He fights in his sleep! He punches the headboard. I’ve been elbowed and kneed in the ribs and back several times. He cusses in his sleep and throws punches in the air. He keeps telling me he wants to sleep in different rooms but I refuse!



We try to do as much as we can with natural remedies so sleeping pills and anxiety pills are out. He has tried drinking Kava Kava at night, which is great for getting him asleep, but didn’t help with the terrors. We’ve tried exhausting him with exercise, going for long walks in the woods, we eat nutritiously, drink teas, smoothies, juices & take supplements, which has been great for our overall health, but still the terrors persisted. There are several other methods we have tried that sometimes help and sometimes don’t.



Recently I was telling my best friend about what we’ve been going through and she suggested giving him a back rub at night with an essential oil / aromatherapy massage oil. I figured “What the Heck. Why not?” and nightly backrubs he was totally game.



We went to the local health-food store and they suggested an essential oil blend that helped with PTSD & stress.  So far he has gone several nights without terrors.   If he does have a terror after I've used the oil it’s more of just a nightmare that I can calm him down from.

His PTSD is very embedded from issues since he was a young child so we weren’t expecting a “one use” miracle cure but at least we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We can both see the difference and have even "experimented" by trying to go without the oils--I can tell you there's a definite difference and without them it’s gonna be a rough night.  The company that makes the oil also has mists and internal drops that we are gonna give a try to see if using them too will help even more.



Here’s a Blog that we found helpful as to why the essential oils make a difference www.kaliana.com/blogs/eatdrinkthink/power-of-essential-oils-on-the-brain


Good luck to you :-)

I haven't read the replies.

My older dd had night terrors until around 9 yrs old. Hers included hallucinations. If my Dh wasn't a pedi I would have been at emerg after the first hallucination. They were beyond crazy and she was totally inconsolable. She sometimes hallucinated in another language - she was in Hebrew immersion at the time - and that freaked me out even more. Watching her was like something out of Harry Potter. Pointing and crying and screaming in Hebrew at something that wasn't there. She once cried and screamed the word for candle in Hebrew. Now that she's 11 she has been able to explain that at that time she'd see flames burning everywhere around her. Omg!

The first time I sent her to sleepaway camp I remember attaching a letter that started 'By the way...'.

Good luck!

Paige.

One of my babies had them, and they were stress induced just like yours, but mine started younger, around 8. Overstimulation, like if the TV was on in the room where she was playing shortly before bed, if she missed a nap (only once when we were visiting relatives), and when her daddy wasn't home from work in time to kiss her goodnight. Really!

They stopped when she was a toddler, but she became a sleepwalker until she was around 10. She's 18 now and regularly suffers from sleep issues too. Just like yours scraphollie27.

My DS has night terrors. They started when he was about 2, he's 7 now and still has them. He goes through spells where he has them and then when he doesn't. His don't last very long (10 minutes or so most of the time). I really feel for those of you who have to watch your kids go through this for so long! It's terrible! What I've noticed is when he's really tired he has more of them. I try to keep him on a good sleeping schedule but sometimes we aren't able to do that depending on what else is going on with my teenagers or when it's summer and our schedule is more lax. Another thing I've noticed is when he has a full bladder it's worse. I always have him get up and go to the bathroom after he wakes up from one.