Night Terrors In Children
What are night terrors in children?
Night terrors in children are activities that happen in a child while it’s a sleep. Often they dream about having their life threatened. On the outside, you see them looking half awake. It is common for a child to start walking around a room, scream, cry, ask for help and sometimes even have their eyes wide open while it happens. Some of these things also appear if a child is having a nightmare.
The difference between night terrors in children and nightmares is the following. With nightmares the child can recall what the dream was. With night terrors there are no memories from the happenings before the following morning. Night terrors in children mostly happen in stages 3 and 4 from the sleep cycle. Nightmares happen during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep – earlier stages.
What are the causes of night terrors in children?
Over time it has been proven that most often than not, night terrors in children are caused by sleep deprivation. These cases are cases in which the sleep routine has been broken. For a healthy sleep routine the most important rule is “Don’t break the routine”.
Other causes of night terrors in children are: stressful situations (could be at home or at school) and lack of sleep (different than breaking the sleep routine).
If there was an accident or other stressful situation in a recent period of time, it is very likely that that’s the cause of those night terrors in children.
What are the symptoms of night terrors in children?
Some of the symptoms of night terrors in children are quite similar to symptoms of nightmares. That’s the primary reason people mix or misjudge weather it is a night terror or a nightmare in question.
The most common symptoms are as follows:
- Suddenly waking up in the middle of the night à This happens during episodes of night terrors in children (about 2-3 after the child is asleep). It might appear as if it’s fully awake when it really is in deep sleep.
- Child presents great fear, panic, and strange behavior à As night terrors in children happen, the children dream of having their life threatened, or someone trying to take them away. Sometimes they might even scream something similar to “Leave me alone”, “Don’t take me”, “Help me”, etc.
- Heart beat increases dramatically à Fear = more adrenaline = higher heart beat.
- Crying, screaming, weaving with their hands à As stated earlier, they are afraid of most things in their dream, this is their reaction.
- Sweating à As the heart rate gets faster, they start the get their temperature higher, which causes them to sweat.
- Difficult to wake up à it’s very hard to wake up children during night terrors in children.
- Not remembering the dream the following morning à As I told you in the previous section: Children have no recollection of the dream they were having during the night terror.
If you find two or more of these symptoms in your child’s sleep problem, you are dealing with night terrors in children.
What are the treatments for night terrors in children?
Treatments as medications and psychotherapy are only recommended for severe cases of night terrors in children. That’s very rare. However, there are a lot of tools and methods that can lower the occurrences of night terrors in children. To gain better knowledge of how serious your case is, and how to threat it EFFECTIVELY THIS is the only resource I would recommend. 100% worth it. Click Here to see it.
As there are medications that were proven to work against night terrors in children those are Benadryl (diphenhydramine) and Benzodiazepine. However before using any medication you are advised to consult a general doctor or a pediatrician.
How to prevent night terrors in children at home?
Having a bed time routine is a great way to stop (or at least, make them occur less often) night terrors in children. Having a pre-bedtime routine is great.
A pre-bedtime routine might be a bedtime story, or a nice bath. Anything that relaxes the child will do. Having a specified bed time is also a great routine.
If a night terror however starts, by all means comfort and try to get your child back in bed and tackle it in. They aren’t aware of the happenings, and that makes them difficult to deal with. Be patient.
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