Night Terrors?

[Aubrey]

I have no experience w/ these, but ohmygosh, I've never had a night like last night, either.

 

Dd2 woke up to go to the bathroom. I took her in there & could tell she was a little panicked, to get to the bathroom in time, I'm thinking. She wants the light on, but I put her on the toilet first. It's not that dark in there, & I tell her the light will hurt her eyes. She flips. Dh tells me to turn the light on. She manages to say, "I told you...light..." very angrily. LOL

 

But then...she FREAKED. Those really aren't big enough letters, but I don't want to yell at y'all. The kind of screaming that makes you want to throw them in the back of the car & drive like a madwoman to the nearest ER.

 

Except...nothing appears to be wrong. Are you hurt? Does something hurt you? But she could barely talk. She'd shake her head no, but no words. She finally mimed to me that she needed a hug, but when I got her off the toilet, she screamed again, crazy person screaming. Said she needed to poop, but when I put her back up there, still screaming an agonizing kind of scream, nothing. Tried to get her down a couple of minutes later, & her legs just locked onto the potty chair.

 

I finally got her to get down & just held her, naked, in the bathroom floor, & she was...shaking isn't the right way to describe it...tense, maybe? Her whole body was like...electric...like I didn't want to set it off again. I finally took her to my bed, & we turned on a short little 30 minute nothing show, & she...kind-of watched it, but mostly clung to me. Finally convinced her to put her pjs & underwear back on & held her some more.

 

She was kind-of calm, but really grumpy, complaining, for ex, that she couldn't get comfortable because "you're too wiggly, Mama." As if! But I think she meant "bumpy."

 

So dh takes her to sleep on the sofa. That obviously didn't work. We listened to her scream for a few min, & while by then it sort of seemed like a discipline issue...I don't think it was, exactly. We didn't treat it like that at all. She's a kid who likes to find excuses to get up, wakes up at the crack of dawn, etc., so we've seen that from her in particular, & when she's like that...well...she's *awake.* W/ this...a couple of times, I looked at her & just...wasn't sure that she was. But I couldn't "wake" her up or get her to snap out of it.

 

Finally, I went & held her again, talked to her, & brought her to our bed. First, her blanket got twisted around her. She tried to fix it, but went straight to *panicking* about it, even though I was helping her. Then she wanted to sleep ON me again. I don't mean snuggling, I mean climbing on top of. Where she'd figure out that I was still "too wiggly." LOL (Except realy not.)

 

To convince her to sleep beside me instead of on me--& she was just *clinging*, climbing at the same time--I had to take her by the shoulders & speak SO firmly, nearly yelling at her. :sad:

 

She kind-of slept after that. I kind-of slept. She wanted my blankets just right. She wanted my arms in certain places. Not the kind of thing I normally put up w/, lol, but...:confused:

 

And then she woke up really early, as always, in my face whining about GET UP I"M HUNGRY. :tongue_smilie:

 

She's been really cranky for at least a week, & I've been giving her 2 naps a day sometimes because she just can't handle...life! She cries at every. little. thing. I've decided it's a growth spurt, & she's fine, but my mom, who's getting all of *my* whining, lol, is convinced that soemthing's wrong & I need to take her straight to the dr, watch for seizures while she sleeps, etc. :001_huh: She's never heard of night terrors, though, & I didn't mention that possibility, because...gosh, the term is so scary, lol. And I don't know anything about them.

 

So help. :001_huh: Please. :001_smile:

[Jennifer in MI]

When she has a tantrum during the day, does it look like this?

 

Have you asked her about it today? Does she remember it?

 

When you mentioned that she was electric, I can picture it. My d.s. had night terrors and electric was exactly how I described it. He'd shake uncontrollably - yet it wasn't a seizure. But, when he did come out of it, he'd fall back asleep immediately. So, our night terrors were a bit different, but parts of it were a lot alike. My d.s. never remembered it, but I always knew when he was going to have one because he'd tell us that things looked funny. Things that were supposed to be big were small. He felt HUGE and everything else looked tiny. This was always at bedtime and absolutely not an excuse not to go back to sleep. He was terrified. Oh - and he wanted the lights ON!!

 

Maybe it started out as a night terror and once she came out of it, she was scared?

[KatieJ]

First of all :grouphug:. It sounds like a really awful night.

 

But it doesn't sound like night terrors. My oldest son had them and he never really talked during them. He would just wake up screaming/hollering and after a few minutes he would go back to sleep. I was completely freaked out by them as they seemed to happen more and more. So, I did some research at the library. ( it was before internet) and they were related to lack of sleep, being overtire, etc. We worked hard on nap time and not letting him get overtired. Usually if he was going to have one, it did NOT happen in the middle of the night, but several hours after he went to sleep. It has to do with levels of sleep and getting stuck in one mode and to into the next.

I don't recall all the details anymore of what I learned, but sleep walking and night terrors are related and can be hereditary. Since my oldest daughter went thru a very short period of sleep walking that all made sense to me.

What you are describing sounds way more complicated.

[Jennifer in MI]

My d.s. would run through the house SCREAMING (I know exactly what you mean about wanting to call the ER!!) and talking nonsense. It was SO freaky. I wonder if night terrors just affect different people in different ways?

[cougarmom4]

:grouphug:

It is scary, isn't it? My dd10 has had night terrors for many years. Just once in awhile...sometimes when she has had a fever, but sometimes just out of the blue.

 

The first few times I was really scared, because she was totally FREAKED out. It made me think of how a lot of people in the 'old' days would say someone was possessed...because I could completely describe some of these night terrors in that way. Screaming, hallucinating, speaking incoherently, etc. It is totally scary to watch your child acting so crazily.

 

Does your dd remember anything about it at all?

 

I have never gone to the doctor specifically about the night terrors, although I think years ago I probably mentioned it and got reassurance that it wasn't incredibly abnormal. It didn't happen often enough to where I was really concerned and then I'd forget about it until the next time. Now, I'm not so freaked out, because I know what's happening and we just work through it.

 

With our dd, she is so out of it that she is definitely not awake (and never remembers it in the morning). This sounds kind of weird, but we start asking her math facts--for some reason it helps her to have to think about things like that and gets her distracted or something. She'll come up with really crazy answers sometimes, but we just calmly keep talking to her, hugging her, holding her, and going through math facts. Sometimes it takes awhile. I take her to her bed and sit by her, rubbing her back, singing her back to sleep. And usually she goes back to sleep and it's over.

 

A few weeks ago when this happened again, dh and I were actually able to laugh about how funny she was rather than be freaked out. That made it feel a little less scary. We were joking that we ought to pull out the camcorder, because she never believes us when we tell her in the morning. And our kids had just seen that funny youtube video about the little boy who had been at the dentist (have you seen that?) and is drugged up...and we told dd she was acting a lot like that!

 

So there is our experience, for what it's worth. I know it's scary...and more so in someone your dd's age.

[hornblower]

Maybe it started out as a night terror and once she came out of it, she was scared?

 

Yes, I wondered this.

 

I also wondered if she'd had an upset tummy or gas or an intestinal cramp and the pain of it all got mixed into the experience.

[Kebo]

One of my sons has night terrors (and sleepwalks), and he will talk during them....but not very coherently. He will do strange things, like pace, or take all the tissues out of a box, one by one. He is always agitated, and nothing I do seems to calm him. When he is ready he just goes back to sleep. He never remembers them in the morning.

[teamturner]

I unfortunately have experience w/night terrors with one of my ds. His have tappered off thankfully and I credit it to him being on asthma medicine. I think he was having breathing problems that brought them on. He also only got them when he was really sick (respiratory kind of sickness) or feverish.

 

You need to decide if you think she was still asleep or was she awake. They may appear awake but you cannot wake them or stop them from screaming when it's a NT. The strategy that worked for us to help him wake up was to put juice into a sippy cup, water also worked but juice is better because of the sugar, I think. Anyways, once we got him to drink the juice he would wake up. The sippy cup was neccessary because the attempts to get him to drink it would often lead him to knock it away as he fought w/us. After he awoke, we took him to the bathroom to make sure he was really awake. If he didn't fully wake up, he would slip right back into the NT once he laid back down. NT tend to happen w/the first 1-3 hours of sleep.

 

This was a helpful website for us. But I think I most liked this one.

 

I hope you figure it out. Our ds, once he was awake he would sleep through the night. We also use homeopathy to help him settle down. Hylands makes a product called Calms Forte and we also use straight Aconite remedy (you should find these at Wholefoods or Sprouts).

[Aubrey]

Yes, she was sort-of fighting me off, but really not like a tantrum. I'd guess that there were two parts: the first part, in the bathroom, I don't think she was awake. At that point, I was talking to her, trying to wake her up, because the screaming seemed...well, more asleep. But so freaky, I'd have believed someoen was in her room hurting her before she came to us, if that makes sense.

 

Then...after we held her in bed & watched a short movie (20min or so)...that might have been more of a tantrum, but honestly? Her body was still so wound up in a fight-or-flight kind of position...she didn't want me in the whiny way she does during the day sometimes. There was still some pretty real terror to her...persona? I don't know what to call the ball of person around a person.

 

Other than shaking her head no, she was barely talking the whole time, but during the 2nd half of the...event?...like I said, there were a couple of times when I was raising my voice above her scream, talking very firmly. I told her I wanted to help, but I *needed* her to use. her. words.

 

Actually...now that I think of it...she still didn't say much, but that seemed to calm her down a smidge.

[Aubrey]

Oh, & fwiw, she'll be 3 next mo.

[Denisemomof4]

she quite possibly could have had a terrifying nightmare, but this sounds more like sleep walking to me. I have lots of experience with both, and I can differentiate between the two.

 

Night terrors are simply terrifying. The child needs to be comforted and to feel safe. To bring her in bed with you was the perfect thing to do.

 

BUT her not really responding to you, not acting coherent, not acknowledging what you say, etc. sounds more like sleep walking to me. When younger ds slept walked at a younger age, he couldn't speak coherently. He'd do things, looking WIDE awake but somehow not really there, and he couldn't really respond to us because he was asleep. He'd talk some and at times it was hard to understand, other times it had nothing to do with what we were talking about. After doing some research and talking to the pediatrician, we realized the best thing to do was to guide him back to bed and NOT talk to him. At all.

 

One time he walked outside and locked himself out of the house in the middle of the night. He awoke outside, freezing, with his blankets in hand. This was absolutely TERRIFYING for him because he didn't know how he got out there or why he was out there. I want to say he was older, like 10 - 12 when that happened. Being awakened when you're sleep walking can be terrifying.

 

When he got older, he started to talk more during his episodes. I remember a year or two ago dh and I were watching tv and it was late at night. Ds came down, looked perfectly awake and fine, and said, "I'm just going to relax and watch some tv." I started to laugh and told him he needed to go to bed. He was SO confused and didn't know how to respond. Again, we were quiet and guided him back to his bed.

 

He never, EVER remembers these incidents.

 

It sounds more like your dd was sleep walking, IMO. Ds has had fear during some of the episodes, but mostly he doesn't. But to awaken them out of their "sleep" is not a good idea.

 

One time, younger ds went into older ds's bedroom and all I could hear was, "Hey! Leave my stuff alone! Knock it off," but younger ds continued to remove all of older ds's clothing from his bureau and refolded it all. :lol:

[Denisemomof4]

one more thing. I noticed that both night terrors and sleep walking occur more frequently when the kids are over tired.

[caayenne]

My older son, Alex, had similar episodes starting when he was around 18 months. At that age, he would just scream at the top of his lungs, run around the house, and generally act.....weird, I guess. It was so freaky! But he didn't talk that well yet, so he couldn't really let us know what was going on at all. But it was very much the same: completely agitated, crying, calming down only to freak out again, looked like he was awake but somehow he just...wasn't. He would run away from us, but if we didn't follow him or stay with him, he would get even more scared and scream for us to come. These would last anywhere from a few minutes to over an hour. And then he would finally just fall asleep, and he never remembered anything in the morning.

 

By the time he was three, he was having them 3-4 times a week. It was awful for us to witness, but we always just assumed it was a form of night terror or sleep walking/talking. As he got older, he talked more and more along with the screaming, and let me tell you, the talking was bizarre. He would have entire conversations about stuff that was not happening. And he would try to argue with us, almost like he wanted it to go on and on. Sometimes he would seem really angry. We finally learned not to engage him in conversation at all, but just to pat his back and say, "It's okay, it's okay." And nothing else. Although he often wanted us to turn the lights on, it always seemed to instantly make it much worse. When he was four, he was finally able to "explain" to us during the episode that he couldn't see very clearly while it was happening and that everything looked different and weird to him. It's so scary for them, I think. I used to just cry and cry after he would go back to sleep.

 

But to make a long story short, we took him to a pediatric neurologist when he was four partly because of these episodes. And he assured us that while these were not classic night terrors, they were "sort-of related". I don't remember the exact term that he used, but it basically means that during the early hours of sleeping, while they're still in a deep stage of sleep, (not REM sleep), they wake up, but not fully. It's called partial arousal, or something like that. But it's like they're "stuck", somewhere between asleep and awake, and they can't transition one way or the other. He reassured us that this was not that uncommon, although Alex was having them about as frequently as he had heard could happen. He said that there was nothing for us to worry about, and that he would grow out of it eventually. And after a few more months, it did start to get a lot better. And now he only has one a couple times a year or so.

 

Sorry for the novel, but I hope this helps a bit. It's so scary to see your little one so scared and out of control, but they really are okay.

 

:grouphug:,

 

Andrea

 

Alex (8) & Ian (4)

[Aubrey]

one more thing. I noticed that both night terrors and sleep walking occur more frequently when the kids are over tired.

 

That's why mom wants me to watch for seizures or something. She thinks there's a reason 2yo's overtired. Could be. She was the one who was so colicky when she was a babe. She's always had a personality that sits right there on the edge of...I don't know...difficult. *Very* difficult.

 

I can't tell if she remembers last night or not. You know how it can be talking to a 2yo. LOL

 

Other than that...I've always wondered about a food allergy w/ her. I've tapered her way off of dairy, but...she hasn't had any more of that lately than usual--cheese on sandwiches every other day or so, no *drinking* milk. She's had plain yogurt several days in a row. And strawberries almost every day for 2 wks. :001_unsure: I think my bro was allergic to strawberries when he was a kid...but he broke out in a little rash, not behavior/sleep issues. But...I've read that some of these sleep issues *could* be breathing related, & obviously sleep issues would lead to behavior issues.

 

Do ya think strawberries could be making it hard for her to breathe when she's sleeping? Wouldn't I notice something like that? :confused:

 

Sorry for thinking out loud at you. Boy, though, I had this awful feeling last night, after she was semi-calm that she *had* to be in the bed w/ me. *sigh* Who knows.

[Aubrey]

Yeah, Andrea, this one's not talking as well as my others have at this age, so in the day time, she really struggles to express herself. Last night, I think it was just too much. It was almost like...regression. She used to grunt intead of talk--not using her tongue or lips or anything--& it was like part of her wanted to do that again, but even that was too much mental effort.

 

Man, she even had trouble using her tongue when she was nursing. I almost gave up because of it. Hmmm...:confused:

[Guest mrsjamiesouth]

I have Night terrors and so does my oldest son. I have done a lot of research and have been to a sleep study.

Night terrors happen within an hour or two of going to sleep. They usually occur when you are overtired or sick. They also are usually set off by being touched or slightly waken by a loud noise. Mine usually happen when my husband bumps against me in his sleep. I wake up screaming.

The worst thing you can do is engage or touch a child going through a night terror. It prolongs the episode. I gently tell my son to go back to bed and guide him without touching too much. Everytime he tries to get up I tell him "lay down." Make your voice soft and quiet. His terrors usually last less than 5 minutes this way. When I used to try to hold him or rock him, he would scream louder and longer.

Some things that help are to keep a light on in the room. I sleep with my bathroom light on, as this for some reason keeps it from happening too much. Also, if you can play a cd on repeat or a radio station the noise will help keep the night terrors from happening. I sleep with the tv on very low or have the radio on.

 

Also, a true night terror is Never Remembered. I never know when I wake up in the morning that I had had a night terror until my husband tells me.

[Denisemomof4]

That's why mom wants me to watch for seizures or something. She thinks there's a reason 2yo's overtired. Could be. She was the one who was so colicky when she was a babe. She's always had a personality that sits right there on the edge of...I don't know...difficult. *Very* difficult.

 

 

 

 

you can look online for symptoms but there were several things I looked for in oldest dd, who was diagnosed with seizures but I don't think she ever had them. I never did get a diagnosis but things appear to be less severe as she ages.

 

Things I watched for: a zoning out stare, like in another world. Making the same body motions over and over (dd used to touch her finger tips over, and say repeatedly, "I need water. I need water." Her lips would turn blue. She'd get VERY hot, and noises were far louder and lights were far brighter, but usually she lost her vision or saw "in dots." With seizures, you never remember what happened. She always did. Fatigue can bring on seizures, but this is not what caused her issues. She had several tests, all were normal.

 

I'd suggest keeping a log of all her symptoms. I did this. Sometimes we'd go several months to a year without writing anything in it, and them she'd have several issues to record in a short period of time. She had cycles of about 1.5 years. We're at that point again, but she's not having issues so far. Sometimes I do see some bluish tinge to her face but 3 pediatricians, 4 pediatric neurologists, and a pediatric cardiologist later, I've given up trying to get that diagnosed. But having an extended period of time logged, and even one "episode" caught on tape during a Christmas play at the church, completely baffled the doctors. They were all thankful for the detailed logs I kept.

[DianeW88]

Take her in for a check-up and be sure to describe everything thoroughly to the pediatrician. You might want to get her blood sugar checked, too....just as a precaution.

 

Diane

[TravelingChris]

My older dd had night terrors and hasn't had them for a few years. SHe would wake up screaming like she was really scared, her eyes would be wide open but not like she was looking at anything, and she would walk. SHe was not awake and we would have to put her back in bed. She would not remember them and sometimes would say something rather nonsensical. She was also our only child who had sleep walking, bedwetting until age 9 or so, and now that she has outgrown all those problems, she has insomnia at times. She is also our only child that probably had a abscence seizure but that only happened one time so it isn't considered epilepsy. Do thse things happen separately? Sure, but just as often you get kids with a cluster of slepp problems. In her night terrors, she was never awake and never asking for anything. You could see she was asleep even though her eyes were open since they looked really vacant.