Night terrors and also daytime terrors

[Kupugani]

I'm a first time poster (long time lurker) who is posting for a friend of mine whose DD is having night terrors about a shark. The thing is is that she is also imagining the shark in the daytime when she is awake as well and the poor thing is totally terrified.

Has anyone experienced this and if so what can be done to help her?

Sorry if I don't post much on this - what I've written is pretty much all I know and her mum is too tired to surf the net on it as she is having to be with her all the time to comfort her.

hi

A couple of observations - firstly, is she sure that they are night terrors and not just nightmares - night terrors aren't usually about anything, just abject terror. nightmares, as you know, are bad (very bad, very very bad) dreams. It sounds to me more like nightmares than night terrors.

When my dd2 has night terrors, there is nothing at all that we can do to calm her down, except hold her and cuddle her and wait for it to subside, when she has a nightmare, words get through to her, so if she was dreaming about a shark, for example, we would tell her to look past the shark and ask her if she can see the submarine that is coming to rescue her. It doesn't matter whether they respond much at all, but the fact that you are talking to them about what they are dreaming about does get through.

I imagine the same would be true of daydream type things.

Has she had any upheaval recently that may account for her unsettledness? It's surprising what little ones can be frightened of, perhaps she has a genuine fear that can be sorted out just by explaining things to her.

Reassure your mate that it is perfectly normal and she shouldn't worry about it unless it carries on for weeks, and cuddles and hugs are deffo the way to go.

Tell her good luck.

And post more, lurkers are always welcome, but dive right in and get posting - it's fun

Hi,
I'm posting as I'm worried about my son. He's 12 years old and has occassional night terrors (and has had periodically for a number of years). However, the reason I'm now worried about his is that we had a call from the school this morning.

Having been in classes for around an hour and a quarter his teacher called and explained that Tom had had 'an episode'. She went to great pains to tell us that it was certainly very genuine, he had tears streaming down his face and when she asked if he'd like to talk with her out of class he said he couldn't move.
My wife spoke with him on the 'phone and he said he was OK and wanted to stay at school so I discussed it wih him in the late afternoon.
He got a little upset and tearful and said he couldn't explain it other than it was like his night terrors.
When I asked him to explain as best he could he said he was 'seeing things and hearing voices but couldn't make out what they were saying'.
He put his head down on his folded arms on the desk and tried to concentrate on it going away.
He said that he was 'a bit light headed' for a while afterwards.
I've heard of night terrors but not anything occurring during the day.
Has anybody any experience of this please?
Thank you.
Chris

just a quickie to say that, while homeopathy has frequently failed to help us, it must be said, the remedy belladonna abolishes my DD's dramatic night terrors within a minute or so. i know it sounds weird. worth a try though? costs around a fiver from boots etc. we use the 30c strength. sit her on our lap, cuddle her as best we can and she sucks the little sugary pills and settles down. it's remarkable.
good luck!

My son, now 13, also experienced night terrors since he was a toddler.The frequency of night terrors has diminshed over time but have been "replaced" with what he calls "day terrors." He too has had difficultly describing what exactly in going on when he experiences these day terrors; he certainly is old enough and creative enough to describe what he must be feeling when these occur, but he can't seem to get past the notion that it's a night terror in the dalylight. There seems to be no pattern..not related to activity, or stress or diet that I can discern. Anyone have any thoughts on what this might be? something benign, something potentially serious? Something that might be detected by a scan?

My ds has suffered from night terrors and nightmares for most of his 8 years. This reached a head when he started getting separation anxiety. I couldn't go into another room without him following me and he panicked if he couldn't see me. He wouldn't go to birthday parties alone and whilst out he would never ever leave my side. He would always have his hand on me.

I sought advice from Young Minds who have a helpline staffed by experience and trained people who work with children. The advice I got was amazing.

The basic rule I found was that instead of discouraging ds to get out of bed at night, I should tell him that he could come and get us at anytime of the night for anything and that he would never be in trouble for doing so. This gave him the reasurrance he needed that he could call on us for help whereas previously he was anxious about disturbing as naturally, after the 4th or 5th time we were not impressed. This alone made a huge difference at night.

I was also able to talk to him about his fears. His were monsters so we drew a picture of the monster and I put a clown's hat on him, a moustache etc and encouraged ds to do the same. Before long we were both laughing at the monster which took some of the fear away from him.

Never tell them that they should stop being scared or that they are just being silly. Take their fears seriously and listen to them. Let them know that you understand and perhaps tell them what you were afraid of when you were a child.

Communicate with them at night about what tomorrow will bring as my ds used to worry if things were not planned. So we'd take some time to talk about how the day went, any worries he might have and what we would be doing tomorrow so that I knew when he went to bed that he didn't have any anxieties bottles up.

Worry dolls may help and also a box to them to keep nightmares in. They draw a picture or write down what they are scared of and put it in a box where it can't harm them. The next day you can both burn it.

I would thoroughly recommend Young Minds for brilliant advice and all I can say, having dealt with similar myself, is to keep reasurring them of your love, make sure you praise them lots (parenting is often too full of telling them what they can't do, what they have done wrong, etc and we miss the opportunities to praise good behaviour, even playing quietly for a time should be praised) and take time out to listen to them and chat about their fears. It takes a while but it does get better