4yo night terrors - wits end

[UnderThunder]

We have a four year old son who is a happy outgoing child with no other issues. He suffers from what I think is night terrors - between bedtime (8pm) sometimes til about midnight he will intermittently wake and cry/sob/whinge in his sleep. Almost like a little temper tantrum sometimes. Not every night, maybe once every 2-3 weeks for a few nights.

He doesn’t seem to remember it at all in the morning and doesn’t seem distressed by it (apart from when it’s happening). I think it’s gone on intermittently since he was about 2.5.

When we speak to him (asking what’s wrong etc) he does seem to be mostly asleep. The problem is - apart from being heartbreaking to witness - he is SO loud. He shares a room with his baby brother, and we worry he will wake him. Sometimes he does. At the moment we are on holiday all sharing a hotel room, and just had the most miserable night ever. We could not get him to be quiet. He was waking me and DH every half an hour or so, and we were worried about other occupants of the hotel too. Baby then woke up from 3am so I didn’t sleep at all (happy holiday!)

Does anyone have any experience of this, or just any tips or advice at all?

Thank you.

From personal experience I think going on holiday with small children is vastly overrated. They dont like not being in their own bed, being out of their routine, different food etc.
Disturbed sleep can be related to over stimulation and overtiredness.
Can you reconfigure sleeping arrangements at home so they don't share?

I hate to tell you this but Ds is 19 and still does it. There have been times it has sounded like someone is being murdered in the hotel room. He has to tell people that he does this, ie uni accommodation so people don't worry about a man shouting in their room at 2am.

At one stage we did something where we deliberately disturbed his sleep before the night terror to interrupt the sleep pattern. This does mean writing down every time they go to bed and what time it happens so you can sometimes see a pattern. We researched it at the time, might be worth looking into. This was at least 10 years ago. Now we just listen to see if it stops. It isn't prolonged in Ds's case maybe 6 seconds? Ds2 got so used to it (they don't share a room at home but do on holiday) that he would just sleep right through it.

When your Ds was waking you every 30 minutes last night was it a night terror each time or just very unsettled because he is in a different environment? We used to get Ds out of bed if we were in a hotel to help "wake" him up enough to get him out of the dream. Ds didn't remember anything. He set up a sleep app on his phone when he was about 14 to record his shouting and was very surprised to hear himself yelling out. He has no recollection of it the next morning.

One day this will be funny, however, end is correct, holidays with very young children are overrated and stressful especially when you add this into the mix. We never did hotel rooms until Ds1 was older and could understand what he did, we usually rented cottages or center parcs villas so the neighbours wouldn't be disturbed.