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moms of precocious learners who had night terrors


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My older 2 are significantly accelerated, but my youngest is different, and precocious. The girls are ahead because they learn easily and abstract natively, but for example I didn't teach them to read until their 5th b'day.

 

My 3rd taught himself all his letters and sounds before his 2nd birthday and is now reading 20-word sentences and worlds like "little", can sound most words out at 3.5yo and really wants to start reading MTH books. He also spouts out his 7yo sister's math facts when I ask her (he'll be drawing in the other room and I'll hear him muttering all the answers before her).

 

The thing is, he is also the only one of my kids who has night terrors, gets a bit "twitchy" in his sleep pattern, complains his feet hurt when he wakes up during the night (I think that may just be that his feet fall asleep the way he tucks his legs under), wakes up, have to soothe him, then he pass back out. Like he has an immature neurological system. Not every night, but pretty common esp if he misses his nap. He's also the only one to still take a nap past 2yo (thank goodness for that! LOL). Aside from that, he is a social, charming kid with great fine motor skills and stuff like that.

 

I guess I am just wondering if one thing has anything to do with the other since they are both neurological, or if it is just luck being "hit by lightning twice". Anyone BTDT?

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My older 2 are significantly accelerated, but my youngest is different, and precocious. The girls are ahead because they learn easily and abstract natively, but for example I didn't teach them to read until their 5th b'day.

 

My 3rd taught himself all his letters and sounds before his 2nd birthday and is now reading 20-word sentences and worlds like "little", can sound most words out at 3.5yo and really wants to start reading MTH books. He also spouts out his 7yo sister's math facts when I ask her (he'll be drawing in the other room and I'll hear him muttering all the answers before her).

 

The thing is, he is also the only one of my kids who has night terrors, gets a bit "twitchy" in his sleep pattern, complains his feet hurt when he wakes up during the night (I think that may just be that his feet fall asleep the way he tucks his legs under), wakes up, have to soothe him, then he pass back out. Like he has an immature neurological system. Not every night, but pretty common esp if he misses his nap. He's also the only one to still take a nap past 2yo (thank goodness for that! LOL). Aside from that, he is a social, charming kid with great fine motor skills and stuff like that.

 

I guess I am just wondering if one thing has anything to do with the other since they are both neurological, or if it is just luck being "hit by lightning twice". Anyone BTDT?

 

 

Have you looked on the SENG website yet? I remember reading something about kids who are unusually gifted on the imaginative side of Over Excitabilities, often having sleep issues. Good luck!

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::raises hand::

 

I have no answers, I've tried magnesium, epsom salt baths, looked for food triggers, activity levels, routine..you name it.

 

My oldest was exactly like this and had to grow out of it.

 

My youngest has this and it is e.v.e.r.y.s.i.n.g.l.e night-exactly on the dot 60 minutes after she falls asleep it starts. Startling, waking up, sometimes in tears, lots and lots of chattering. Sometimes sleep walking...

 

I've learned to send her to bed early, wait an hour, listen for it, wake her up, send her back to sleep. Same pattern as her older sister.

 

I expect she'll have to grow out of it as well.

 

My conclusion, lightning strike #2 here.

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I don't have an answer either, but I can tell you that I'm not sure my DD7 has yet slept through the night. However, she HAS gotten better at being able to wake up, or partially wake up, and get herself soothed and under control without waking up everyone in the house at this point. It got better at about age 6, although if she's been more stressed and active than usual, it gets worse for several days until her system gets under control. I think you're exactly right that it's an immature nervous system, because her sensory stuff in general got a lot better at around age 6 1/2 or so, and she also started sleeping better and panicking less in the middle of the night at about that time. She has a lot of little neurological signs, but manages not to quite hit any diagnosis except HG+.

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I have read that it is associated with overexcitabilities, but I know that kids who are not gifted get them too. My dd with the most overexcitabilities had them for a few years. Not every night, but enough to make me want to pull my hair out. She has outgrown them now, but has very vivid dreams. I never found anything helpful other than holding her close when it happened. I tried everything. Dietary changes, not reading before bed, lights on, nice warm baths and many more. Fortunately it only lasted until she was about 3.

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thank you all for answering my unspoken question of almost 6 yrs. I always thought of if funny that my child could not sleep through the night and the new baby could!

 

THANK YOU, for letting me know that it is "normal" My child is really gifted, socially has some issues, mainly too stubborn to conform to the crowd. It is getting better.

 

DOn't know if related or not, but we took RED 40 die out of the picture due to rash, but I dare say at around the same time, sleeping became a once a week sort of thing, rather than a daily thing.

 

I would like to subscribe to this thread and keep h earing what you all do, and what happens.....

 

:bigear:

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Well, we eat only organic, no preservatives, artificial colors, etc., but DD did not sleep through the night until maybe at 5 years old. As a baby until maybe 1.5 years old, she used to wake up very hour. Even now, she doesn't seem to require that much sleep. She talks in her sleep, full sentences, and sometimes in a foreign language. One time she did sleepwalk, and I stayed with her for some time just to make sure she wouldn't wander outside. She stopped taking naps only recently. She can be overexcited about whatever moves her in the moment. I have given her certain supplements, like magnesium, but I'm not sure if it helped. Her legs seem to hurt before bed time, but I just put a little arnica on them. I don't think DD is gifted, however - just accelerated or quick to learn certain concepts. In her case, reading at 3 years old doesn't seem to be a sign of giftedness - it seemed like the right time after several years of reading aloud.

 

All this has seemed to improve over time.

Edited by crazyforlatin
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I have read that it is associated with overexcitabilities, but I know that kids who are not gifted get them too. My dd with the most overexcitabilities had them for a few years. Not every night, but enough to make me want to pull my hair out. She has outgrown them now, but has very vivid dreams. I never found anything helpful other than holding her close when it happened. I tried everything. Dietary changes, not reading before bed, lights on, nice warm baths and many more. Fortunately it only lasted until she was about 3.

 

Actually what you just wrote, reminds me of how vivid Dd's dreams are, not just now, but starting at a very young age, maybe around 2. I suppose in a way it's great because I often hear her laughing in her sleep and she wakes up narrating her dreams to us. But then there are those nightmares as well.

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My DS9 used to have Night Terrors, starting younger than average. The medical websites all say 18 months to seven years, but my guy was less than a year when they started, maybe 8 months or so. He did outgrow them at about age five or six, switching to regular Nightmares instead. He is gifted -- we've never officially tested, but he's at least HG, based on the development charts out there. He was a very sound sleeper as a little guy -- that is, I once hit his head hard on the door jam carrying him to bed, and he never woke up.

 

I pulled out my trusty "Misdiagnosis..." book by James Webb, and it seems to indicate that Night Terrors occur in the gifted about 15% of the time, which is actually the same as the American Academy of Pediatrics estimate for all children. Nightmares, however, are reported much more frequently in the gifted and are usually far more vivid.

 

My son would "wake up" wailing. He'd sit up and his eyes would be open, but he wasn't really awake, which is typical of a night terror. He'd alternate between grabbing for me and pushing me away and he was not consolable. Somewhere between 10 to 30 minutes later (though one episode was much longer), he'd just suddenly lie back down and be back to normal sleep. In the morning, you'd never know anything had happened. These usually happened after he went to bed, but before we did.

 

When he outgrew the night terrors and started in to "regular" nightmares, there were pros and cons. On the one hand, he is awake and can be consoled, and sometimes can console himself. He is usually back to sleep in less than 10 minutes. On the other hand, he remembers these and is afraid to go to sleep at night. He no longer sleeps as soundly. He is finally getting so he doesn't wake us up every time, only for the most vivid dreams, but these are happening at 4:00 in the morning, so they are interrupting his sleep and sometimes mine.

 

He does sometimes talk in his sleep, but then, both of my girls frequently do. In fact, the girls talk, laugh, and even sing in their sleep, which is pretty funny.

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I really like Ferber's book as a general resource for sleep information -- it has addressed some things I couldn't find elsewhere (such as "night terrors" in our infant! really turned out to be "confusional arousal"). I know something about neurophysiology and sleep (thought not a lot), and the science in this book is quite robust.

 

Ferber has a bad name b/c of sleep training, but don't let that put you off this resource -- you could get it through your library.

 

Also, if you haven't looked at the literature on "highly sensitive" children, you might want to?

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Thank you all. Yes, I never consider going to bed myself until he's been asleep past that one hour mark. Sometimes he talks or giggles in his sleep, or sits bolt upright. A couple times he's gotten fearful and then as he rouses to waking croaks out, "can't...talk" -- I think he isn't awake enough to speak and is trying to answer me and it freaks him out sometimes.

 

I will look into the sensitive and excitability resources mentioned. He is extremely creative. Interestingly during the day he's actually pretty mature for his age and calm. But when sleep comes....

 

Encouraging to hear similar kids outgrew it. Thanks.

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We don't really have sleep problems here, but my dd has been prone to nightmares at times in the past.

 

She's a very dramatic kid. When she was about 2 or 3, she began a long obsession about death. I'm sorry, but I always found it amusing because she was so serious and curious about it. Because she was so young, she didn't understand 100%, as proven by her question: "How do dead people's heads turn into rock (headstones)?" She was also morbidly fascinated by war and a few other gloomy things.

 

She would tell me about her nightmares and that was pretty much that. If she was very scared, she could come to my bedroom at night, but that didn't happen much. I told her that everyone has nighmares and they aren't real, etc., and she seemed to accept that. It probably helps that she sleeps with her sister, so some level of comfort is always there.

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I don't know if this will help, but it might. My dd, now almost 4, started with night terrors - waking up wailing in the night when she was maybe 2 I think and still has them occasionally. But my dh had read somewhere about in some cases being a faulty need-to-pee signal and that if you take them to the bathroom and they go, that can end the terror. So he tried it and sure enough it has worked for us. She is crying/wailing all the way being carried to the bathroom, while helped with her clothes, while she goes and gets wiped, and on the way back to bed but as soon as her head hits the pillow she is right asleep. It's the strangest thing to watch but I am very thankful that we found something that works for us, otherwise the crying would go on for quite some time. Maybe that will be helpful to someone.

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I never thought of ds as being "sensitive", more like "bullet-proof". I mean, I always thought if sensitive in terms of babies that startle and cry a lot or kids getting anxious around new people, and ds is Mr Social.

 

But the more I think of it, perhaps he is sensitive in a different way and our home environment is just set up to soothe a sensitive child already, so it hasn't been apparent (AP, HSing, strong routine). When I look at Elaine Aron's checklist, he scores 15, which is high enough to be highly sensitive. More importantly, when I think about the questions...how gently we have to correct him, him empathetic and intuitive he is, how he covers his ears at noisy places and even at the small waterfall....definitely something I need to look into more deeply.

 

Anyway, thank you all for putting this onto my parenting radar!

 

ETA: I could never do the CIO with night terrors (plus he shares the room with his sisters, so not fair). Early on, we'd take him down and found cartoons (which he'd never get to watch normally) seems to calm him, then he'd just pass out after a few minutes and we'd take him back to bed. Lately, even when he doesn't seem to see/hear me, if I ask if he wants a bottle or milk, he nods, quiets and falls right to sleep. I never get a bottle (he's too old), but it's a comfort association that seems to cut through. Weird.

Edited by ChandlerMom
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This isn't night-terror related, but can I still whine a bit? Right now where we live (near Seattle) it doesn’t really get dark until after 10PM. I have black out blinds in my son's room, but not my daughter's. Light and extra-sensitive kids, is an issue at bedtime too.

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This isn't night-terror related, but can I still whine a bit? Right now where we live (near Seattle) it doesn’t really get dark until after 10PM. I have black out blinds in my son's room, but not my daughter's. Light and extra-sensitive kids, is an issue at bedtime too.

 

 

That's one reason why I can't imagine, at this point, sending my DD back to school. She doesn't seem to settle until n hours after it's gotten dark outside, and n seems to get bigger the older she gets. When she was 4 and in K, n=1/2 hour or so, which wasn't bad (and sometimes led to her falling asleep at the dinner table during Winter months). At 7 1/2, n= about 3 hours, so for most of the year, it's past 10:00 PM before she's at all able to settle, and right now, it's close to midnight. Blackout drapes help her sleep longer in the morning, but don't seem to help reduce the n factor (maybe we need to black out the whole house?). Waking her up early doesn't change when she seems to be able to go to sleep at night-it just leads to a cranky kid.

 

It's one of these quirks that I'm figuring she'll either have to outgrow, or find a way to work around it when she's older.

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But my dh had read somewhere about in some cases being a faulty need-to-pee signal and that if you take them to the bathroom and they go, that can end the terror. So he tried it and sure enough it has worked for us.

 

I didn't know this was common. When my son was younger and used to do the ALL the time I'd give him a drink of water and escort him to the bathroom. I have been at a few births and I am used to encouraging people to drink and pee. It worked for my son too.

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DD's doctors have a tendency to blame all of her difficult behavior (sleep problems, meltdowns, eating problems, etc) on her intelligence. She isn't diagnosed gifted, but her pediatrician definitely was telling me at 9 months old that her sleep problems were because she was so smart. :tongue_smilie:

 

She started having something like night terrors very early. Maybe around 6 months old? She would sit up and wail and was inconsolable. Not for long - maybe 5-10 minutes? - but nothing would help. Eventually she would calm down enough to nurse back to sleep. This would happen Every. Single. Night. Multiple times. We thought it was silent reflux or something else causing actual physical pain, but none of the fixes for those things worked. The older she's gotten, it's seemed to me that it probably was night terrors. But I really am not sure.

 

From about 2 years old on, she has been consolable. I can talk to her and calm her down. I can soothe her back to sleep. I've wondered if she was just waking up crying out of habit now, or whether it had morphed into nightmares instead of night terrors. It's really hard to say. :confused:

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