night terrors, sleepless nights - help anyone?

[sleepneedmoresleep]

My five year old is struggling with night terrors, waking up in the middle of the night and generally leading to sleepness nights for her and me... can anyone suggest anything that might help???? GP not really saying really helping...

If your toddler can talk, have a chat with him to see if anything in particular is bothering him. If so, it could potentially be triggering his night terrors. Helping him to resolve his worries may stop the terrors from happening.

Following a consistent bedtime routine may help your toddler to relax in the evening. For example, you could brush his teeth, give him a bath and then read him a story before tucking him into bed. This is a great way to encourage good sleep habits in general, and may also help with night terrors.

If your toddler's night terrors usually happen at a particular time, try gently waking him about 15 minutes beforehand. This will take him out of the deep sleep phase where night terrors happen. If you do this every night for a week, it may reset his sleeping pattern enough to prevent the night terrors.

• taken from babycentre.co.uk

Do you have a nightlight? I'd certainly be keeping some sort of light on all night. It does make a psychological difference, to drop off knowing its never going to be dark.

oh yes, maybe you could get one of these to keep by her bed: www.amazon.co.uk/Minnie-Mouse-Torch-Night-GoGlow/dp/B00L16V2Z4/ref=sr_1_13?s=lighting&keywords=go+glow+night+light+and+torch&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8&qid=1537114862&sr=1-13 it is a nightlight, until you lift it up and it becomes a torch.

The Gro Clock people make a good thing that goes around a conventional light bulb, it's excellent.

Thanks - really helpful.
Is the babycentre a good place for other reference material?

@elsbethflashman thatnks - where can I get it... amazon?

DS tends to get night terrors when he goes to sleep overtired. It's like he gets into too deep a sleep.

The only way we can get him to snap out of it and go back to sleep and stay asleep is to properly wake him up. If we don't wake him up properly he'll fall back asleep and wake with more night terrors later. Things we try to wake him up are: getting him to have a drink, getting him to try having a wee or failing that we put CBeebies on the iPad. He'll fall asleep watching it within 5 minutes and then we put him back to bed. It's almost like he has to be completely woken up to reset his brain.

Is this definitely night terrors? My Dd has confusional arousal which are somewhere in the middle of sleep and night terrors. Only asking because they have slightly different responses/things that help. Distressing either way as the parent.
Either way good bedtime routine and less day time stress make for better sleep.

Actually you can get it everywhere else too, Mothercare, Smyths, Argos..... Just make sure you get the right type for your light fitting (prong or twisty) as they do both.

You couldn't read a story by it but you can still see everything in the room. We have it on the bedside lamp in DSs room and it does help. He was waking up and putting on the full bright bedside light several times a night but he doesn't do that anymore.

My ds are more likely to have night terrors when overtired. It then becomes a bit of a vicious circle with the disturbed sleep making them even more tired. My ds1 had them on and off until he was 10yrs and ds3 still has them at 8. Unfortunately dh has sleep disturbances as does his father so I think they must be genetic! I found there was little I could do (other than aim for good sleep habits generally) and just waiting it out. Sometimes getting ds3 to go to the toilet helped but not always. With sleep disturbances they have no recall of what happened in the night and are not awake when they are happening. Ds1 would hallucinate and jump around his bed - we had to take him off the top bunk as we were so concerned for his safety.

My 10yr old still gets the occasional night terror and its usually if he's over tired or been watching tv/tablet too close to bed time.
I make sure he's got a set bedtime - minus the odd late night on special occasions - and all tablets/tv/computers are switched off 30 minutes before bed to give his brain a chance to relax and wind down.
If he does have one i have to completely wake him up which usually consists of bringing him downstairs and turning the lights on and offering a drink.
If i dont completely wake him up the night terror can go on for half an hour or he goes back to sleep and wakes up with another one xx

I agree with @chasingsushi 's ideas. What worked for us was getting ds to have a drink, washing his hands and face or getting up to watch some tv for 10 mins