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Dealing with loud, active night terrors


Janie Grace
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This was our third night of night terrors for ds9. He has had them before -- just moments of agitated confusion where he gets up all disoriented, says things that don't make sense and then goes back to bed. But these recent ones are lasting a long time (like 15 minutes or more) and he is crying, sweaty, trying to run around to either get away from monsters or warn people of impending doom. Tonight the whole family had turned into Legos.  :crying: He is so agitated and upset -- it is almost like dealing with someone who is high or something (I don't know this from experience, but I imagine it's similar). I just read you aren't supposed to wake them up, which we have been doing. So we will stop that. But how do you help them calm down and go back to bed? Poor kid -- I hate seeing him so freaked out. 

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Dd had them multiple times a night for years.  What helped us:  not letting her get over tired and magnesium (Kid's Calm by Natural Vitality or through epsom salt baths).  I never figured out anything to really help during - except for holding her sometimes to keep herself from hurting herself (she would thrash wildly). 

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My dd had night terrors when she was younger a couple of times a week for over a year. Through lots of trial and error we found the best thing to do was put her in front of the tv or bring in a laptop to her room and put on a movie. It would slowly wake her up and she would come back to her normal self. Once we figured it out it made everything better! Good luck!

 

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I would wake dd up before the time she would have normally had the night terror to use the bathroom and then tuck her back in bed. It seemed to reset her sleep cycle and she wouldn't wake up again till morning.

 

I agree with trying to avoid going to sleep in an agitated or overtired state, that was usually a trigger for her.

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Out DS had them from 9 mos. old until about 4- when I finally looked them up and learned about them being linked to magnesium defiency... we started giving him epsom salt baths before bed, and they gradually went away... by the time he was 5, he didn't need epsom salt baths either. He's 11 now, and hasn't had them since.

 

I do give him Magnesium supplements now. Tgey help him fall asleep, sometimes he can have imsomnia, and they also make his adhd a little better.

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DD had them for a while but they subsided just as quick as they had started, so I am no help there.  In the pharmacy world, we see Prazosin used for night terrors in adults with PTSD.  I also see it used in children for PTSD, but I don't know if it used for children with night terrors.  

 

Lots of families have found little tricks that seem to help thier kids with this issue, but if you get to the point of considering medications, it may be worth a chat with your doctor to see if it is appropriate for this use in children. 

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Ds always seems awake when he's actually having night terrors. It is - hands down - one of the freakiest things I've ever seen. The craziest one ever was when he was about 7 yo. I was literally carrying him from my room to go downstairs and he suddenly started screaming at the top of his lungs and pointing to a random spot by my door. He screamed, "It's there! It's there! Get me away from it! Help!" over and over. It was like I was in a horror movie. No joke, I thought, if this was a movie there really *would* be something there I would be the stupid parent who doesn't immediately flee town and by the end of the film we'd all be killed by demons.

 

Usually it's not that severe. And thankfully he hasn't had one in awhile.

 

The only thing I've ever had help was to pick him up and take him outside. For some reason getting outside in the middle of the night would wake him up and he'd be all like, why am I outside? Which was always so reasonable that we'd just be able to calmly go back in.

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Mine was (poor kid) sometimes half awake, or rather aware, during his night terrors. His terrors were similar to what Farrar describes, except that afterward he could remember being aware that it wasn't real, but helpless and unable to switch states from the terror to the awake/aware part of himself. Talk about freaky.

 

He did say that the best thing I could do was to sit with him and talk calmly, reminding him over and over that he was okay. Eventually, he taught himself to get enough control to come get me so I could sit with him until he could switch states. He'd walk in my room wide-eyed, saying, "It's not real, it's not real, it's not real," in his distorted voice, and I'd know to rub his back, talk soothingly, describe what I saw around us, remind him it wasn't real, that he was safe.

 

Like others, his biggest trigger was lack of sleep, which meant it would cycle because after a terror he'd be afraid to go to sleep. Also, fever was a big terror trigger for him.

 

I think he's outgrown them. It's been a long time, none since he hit puberty. I might try taking him outside if it happens again, though. My guess is that something about the transition helps transfer to a different mental state?

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I still remember having them. I think I outgrew them by 6 or 7. They were so vivid that to this day I remember some of the recurring ones. They were different from regular nightmares because I really believed I was awake ant things were happening in real life. I learned to control my dreams and wake myself up and I 'think' that's when they ended.

 

If it's any consolation, my mother, to this day, is more traumatized by the experience than I was. She describes some pretty dramatic scenes where my eyes were open and I was acting nutty, but she could not wake me up.

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I had two children who had night terrors on a nightly basis for 2 (TWO) years!!!. Someone asked if they ate anything with nitrates/nitrites, hot dogs, deli meat, any kind of sandwich meat, bacon, etc. After 3 days without any of that stuff the night terrors disappeared. They struggle with bad sleep now if they have anything like that days in a row or of they eat anything with 'spices' (code for MSG) in it. Things like the really coated Doritos chips with nacho or ranch flavorings.

 

Worth a try.

 

 

 

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Some kids get night terrors when they are too hot.

 

My 4-year-old is no longer allowed to sleep in synthetics or in footed pajamas and his night terrors are basically gone. I know two other families for whom this has worked. I thought it sounded wacky when I first heard it, but tried it out of desperation and it worked.

 

Emily

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One ds used to get horrible night terrors when he was about 6 or so.  He thought dh and I were trying to kill him and he would scream bloody murder.  It was horrible.  We spent some time praying in his room and then praying over him and the night terror part never occurred again.

 

Instead, it morphed into regular sleepwalking with ds being agitated.  Often he was trying to fix something.  Often he said his hands felt weird - he'd get quite upset about the feelings in his hands during these sleepwalking sessions.  We called it the witching hour because it would happen the same time every night.  I totally get what you're saying - it is like dealing with someone who's on a bad acid trip.  Whatever ds was trying to do in these "dreams" was pretty serious - he needed to fix whatever it was that was broken and he became very agitated.  

 

We found that engaging in conversation with him helped.  The key, for us, was to slowly wake him up.  And, for us, the best way to do that was to get him thinking - we'd quiz him on his times tables, get him to sing the ABC's, sometimes we'd take out his violin and get him to play.  Eventually he'd wake up and we'd take him back to bed.  Dh was better at this process than I was.  I'd often put him to bed too early - before he was truly awake - and then he'd be up again a few minutes later.

 

These episodes eventually (once he hit about 11 or 12) started to happen less often.  When he was 13 and 14 he only slept walked if he was really sick or really stressed out about something.  He's only done it once at age 15.  

 

Good luck.  I know how unsettling it can be.

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Maybe seeing a doctor can help. I say this because when my oldest dd was about 3 she started having night terrors and we could not figure out why. So one night I called her Dr. who had me bring her in for a full check up. After her labs came back it turned out her that the diabetes was causing her to have these night terrors. I am not saying that your ds night terrors are due to something like diabetes but I am saying that it might be worth a call or visit to the Doctors office to see if food allergies could be causing the night terrors.

Edited by TeaCookiesBears
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I had two children who had night terrors on a nightly basis for 2 (TWO) years!!!. Someone asked if they ate anything with nitrates/nitrites, hot dogs, deli meat, any kind of sandwich meat, bacon, etc. After 3 days without any of that stuff the night terrors disappeared. They struggle with bad sleep now if they have anything like that days in a row or of they eat anything with 'spices' (code for MSG) in it. Things like the really coated Doritos chips with nacho or ranch flavorings.

 

Worth a try.

 

I was going to say nitrates too.  They caused other problems for our dd, but I agree it's worth eliminating them to see if it helps.  

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Our DS2 is nearly 5 and has had long, intense, loud night terrors since he was a baby. As he's gotten older, we've learned a few tricks:

 

Don't let him get overtired. He WILL have a night terror.

Magnesium Calm at least once a day.

Don't try to wake him up. Once we figured that out, he went from 30-45 minute terrors down to 5-15 minute ones.

Weighted blanket. If we can get the weighted blanket into him (usually while we hold him...but he's 4, not 9), he calms more quickly. We have a weighted vest that might work if he were less receptive to being covered by the blanket (you button it on).

Keep the lights dim. My boy gets louder and flails his body much more when the lights are bright.

 

Edited to add: others have mentioned dietary triggers. My son has a number of food allergies/sensitivities, including dairy, wheat, legumes, and food coloring. At least the legumes and the food coloring were night terror triggers (the terrors are actually how I figured out his soy sensitivity).

Edited by BooksandBoys
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