Night Terrors or something like them....please, please help or advise

[Eve4Walle]

I'll try and keep this short...

Last summer, DD aged 5 started having episodes of night terrors. I can only say that she was acting as if she was awake, but was actually asleep, and was still dreaming whilst walking about and sitting up. Mostly, she'd cry and say she was scared, I'd cuddle her and after a while she'd either wake up properly or just go back to sleep. It only happened 5 times at the most, and was very disturbing to watch and left her feeling confused and upset.

This last week they have started again, but with a vengeance. For the last 4 nights or so, she's gone to bed as normal, but come downstairs literally screaming at the top of he lungs, jumping up and down in a very frantic and frenzied fashion with a look of sheer terror on her face and trying to open the front door to get out of the house. She's asleep, I am sure of it, and still trapped in her dreams, and she tells me to get her out of the house and that the room is coming to get her. Last night it happened twice, tried to open the front door and it took a very long time to get her to calm down each time. She does calm with reassurance, but then finds it hard to sleep as she is worried about it happening again.

My question is whether this is normal in a child of 5? Is it something she will grow out of? Should I see a Doctor about it?

oh poor her. I did some research on this a bit ago as we suspected ds2 was suffering from them.
I think it's more common in younger children, but I don't think 5 is too old for them.

one thing I did read was that they tend to happen at around the same time each night, or rather, a certain amount of time after the child has gone to sleep.
ie, ds2 was waking generally about 11.30pm.
the advice given was to wake them up before the night terrors start in order to disrupt the sleep cycle and prevent it happening.
anyway, ds2 had them every night for about 4 nights and on the 5th I woke him at 10.30 and he was fine all night. not had another since!

It is the peak age for nightmares, apparently...poor dd

My dd1 is also 5, and has recently gone into a phase of being scared to be in a room on her own, and had a few nightmares at the start of it - not night terrors though, she had those when she was about 3-4, crying and angry and not wanting to be touched for up to an hour at a time, with no memory of it. Horrible, I do feel for you.

Would second idea of waking her up before they start. Also, if she is having a recurring nightmare (room coming to get her/feeling trapped?) it might be worth talking about it with her? And, asking her what would make her feel safer? dd's fears were focussed on 'aliens' and she ended up doing 'safety magic' every night by putting treasured objects near her bed, which seemed to really help. After a few weeks, she doesn't need to do it anymore.

Good luck, and yes, I'd think its pretty normal