Her Night Terrors are my Nightmares

1

Recently, my three year old daughter began having night terrors.   I hope this is something you haven’t experienced, but after doing some research, it is a relatively common phenomenon in mostly younger children.  One study I read, said even up to as high as 40% of children have experienced them.  When they first started happening, I didn’t even realize what was happening.  I thought she was having a really bad dream.  After multiple nights in a row, we knew that these were not just regular nightmares.  They are far worse than that.  Here are few clues that your child may be experiencing a night terror:

  1.  They are asleep.  Even though her eyes were open and she looked awake, she was fast asleep.  She did not react to our soothing efforts.  In fact, she had no response to us at all.  We couldn’t get through to her.  We kept telling her that she was okay and safe and she didn’t respond.  We would even ask her questions and she wouldn’t acknowledge us.
  2. Your child may talk, but more likely, they will scream.  Our daughter screamed in a chilling tone.  Hearing how afraid she was is the most disheartening sound as a parent.  She would occasionally say a few words but they were hard to understand and really didn’t make sense.
  3. They may tremble.  One of the first signals that this was worse than a bad dream was her shaking.  During her terrors, she shakes uncontrollably.  No amount of soothing stopped her trembles.

Once we realized that our daughter was experiencing night terrors, I immediately scoured the Internet for answers on what was causing them and how we could help.  It broke my heart that she was so afraid of something and that I couldn’t take her fear away.  From research (I am no medical expert) and mom experience, here are a few things that may help if your child ever experiences a night terror.

  1.  Don’t wake them up!  My first instinct was to wake her up and stop this terrible event.  However, almost everything I read said that you should not do that.  You should just be there with them (they probably don’t know you are there) and try to keep them safe.  It’s best to just be patient and wait until it ends.
  2. If they happen repeatedly, take note of when they happen.  For most children, they occur 60-90 minutes after they fall asleep.  For our daughter, they happen almost an hour after she falls asleep.  I read suggestions of waking them up around 15 minutes prior to when they happen.  This throws off the sleep cycle and may prevent a terror from occurring.
  3. Don’t hold onto them.  As a mom, I kept holding my daughter (because she is shaking and scared) but I read that since they don’t know it’s you comforting them, this frightens them more.  I usually just put her on my lap but don’t hug her.  It seems to help for us!

Although they are incredibly scary to live through, the good news is that most children outgrow them and they never remember them.  It is unknown what causes them but there are no known linkages to other illnesses.  So, if you ever happen to experience one of these, try to stay calm and remember that it will pass!

In-Article Ad
Previous articleI Do It All…
Next articleTop 5 Maternity Must-Haves
Crystal
Crystal has been married to her husband, Dan, for four and a half years. They have a three year old daughter, Olivia (Livy) and a son, Sam, who just turned 1. She went to undergraduate school at UW-Madison and has a Masters degree in public health, also from Madison. Crystal works for HSHS during the day as an Epic System Analyst and runs her own LuLaRoe clothing boutique at night (https://www.facebook.com/LuLaRoebyCrystalLynn/). In her spare time, she enjoys camping, drinking wine or coffee (depending what time of day it is), reading, running, interior decorating, gardening and spending time with her family and friends!

1 COMMENT

  1. To Crystal, Who wrote this article on night terrors.You can stop your daughter night terrors completely it’s all natural and very healthy for our bodies,more than you can imagine. It’s called Dark chocolate cacao candy bar, yes you heard correctly. Dark chocolate stop’s night terrors, sleep talking, sleep walking, sleep paralysis. But with sleep walking & sleep paralysis it requires higher enriched dark chocolate 80% or higher. I myself uesd suffer from night terrors from childhood to my adult life. I’m now going on 8 yrs completely free from all my night terrors with no setbacks at all. Keep in mind this is a daily regiment each night to keep it away.So if you have any doubts at this point Crystal. Go to youtube and watch my video. Just type in treating night terrors, panic, with dark chocolate. It’s about 10 mins long. And make sure you scroll all the way down from the video and read all the individuals comments that dark chocolate has helped their lives completely. I have dear young female friend of mine. She was telling me that her 4yr old daughter is having night terrors every night screaming and crying and running into her bedroom. She took my on the dark chocolate. Happy to tell you that her daughter night terrors have stopped completely with no setbacks at all.All I can tell you is the way dark chocolate works, it suppresses all triggers of any episodes from happening completely! Like for your daughter Hershey’s special dark chocolate candy bar, 1 small square it’s 3 hours or more before bedtime each night. Works on the very first night. Buts it’s up to you to try. I hope this was helpful for you & your daughter. Take care.

Comments are closed.