Dealing with 4yo night terrors/ sleep walking

[LittleLionMansMummy]

He's had night terrors for as long as i can remember, though they were fairly rare. He is currently having them most nights and worrying over the last 3 or 4 weeks has sleepwalked 3 times - though hasn't made it out of his room.

Dh has always had night terrors and ds's don't seem to be linked to any particular anxiety. During the day he's happy go lucky, chatty and relaxed. There is nothing in his home life that has changed - our home is a happy and relaxed place where we're all loving and affectionate towards one another. He very occasionally wakes up properly and gets in our bed because he says he's scared of ghosts. We go with it, comfort him until he's asleep and return him to his bed. This is very rare.

We still have a monitor due to his nightmares/ sleep walking and terrors and i'm not yet prepared to ditch it. We take sensible precautions and have kept a stair gate at the top of the stairs. The nightmares we can live with, but the terrors are awful because he cries so hard with tears streaming down his face yet we can't console him. Has anyone else experienced this and is there anything we can try to reduce them? He has a relaxing bedtime routine and regular bedtime, settles well etc.

Anyone?

Sorry I have no experience dealing with sleepwalking / night terrors in children myself but I can tell you what my mum did 30 years ago. I can't remember it but she told me about it recently as I now have a son and was wondering about it. So it might give you ideas / perspective.

For sleepwalking unfortunately no solution apart from baby proofing everything until I was about 7-8, then I got a sense of where things were instinctively and didn't hurt myself until I was much older (3 accidents in 30 years and 25 episodes a year... Not bad)

For night terrors, 3 things:

• discussing "big events" of the day at diner to "debrief" and hopefully alleviate any anxiety
• no tv or games 1hr before bedtime
• she taught me to recognise real from dream by using a focal point in the room I was in. So bedtime routine was to checkout the bedroom wherever I was and find my "I'm awake" reference (I changed it often). She had little fluorescent star stickers with her for me to put on the wall or bed headboard when not at home. As a result I still woke up screaming 2-3 times a month BUT I knew I was safe.

Not sure you've experienced night terrors yourself? It's scary, incredibly, for 10 seconds but it passes very quickly if you're in a safe environment and 2 out of 3 times I only vaguely remember I screamed the whole place down during the night.

I think also these things mostly pass by the time they're teenagers.