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Parenting

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Child screaming at night

3 replies

Cass1ope1a · 25/08/2022 05:38

Hoping someone can help me.

My daughter is nearly 3. For the last few nights she has been waking up in the middle of the night screaming incoherently and shaking. When I pick her up I can feel her trembling, it’s almost like her hands and feet are spasming. Tonight I found her standing up in bed pointing to something on the wall. She tried to struggle out of my arms then reached up to be picked up again. When I brought her to my bed, she lay still for a few minutes then started shouting the same nonsensical words over and over again and became furious (to the point of almost making herself sick) when we don’t know what she means. (Ordinarily she speaks 2 languages very well). We have only just got her to calm down.

The only changes in her life is that her grandma is visiting at the moment.

Does anybody recognise this kind of behaviour? My first thought was night terrors but I don’t know much about them. (I also wondered if it might be to do with sugar - she’s had ice cream a few times since Grandma has been here because it’s been so hot. I myself get almost unbearable restless leg syndrome when I have sugary things like ice cream. We are going to try cutting it out completely to see if that helps).

Right now I feel sick with anxiety and the shock of being jolted awake by my screaming child and I’m desperate to help her.

OP posts:
7Worfs · 25/08/2022 05:42

We had a similar phase like that, my boy would wake up all sweaty and upset, and not quite coherent and aware… trying to talk made it worse, we just cuddled him and stayed with him until he fell asleep again.
I think it lasted around two weeks (?) then it stopped happening.

DickeryDock · 25/08/2022 06:22

My son has done this a few times and it has always been when he has got a high temp.

Photosymphysis · 25/08/2022 06:28

Both mine had this at a similar age. I presume night terrors.

The best fix for it we found was to firstly put them on the loo (sometimes it was that that was not quite waking them up), and then watch something soothing (moon baby, hey duggee, in the night garden). And then they'd calm down and go back to sleep.

It's frightening but I think it's a relatively normal artefact of normal brain development.

Like all phases, it passed eventually and now they sleep through.

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