2yr old waking up screaming? night terrors? any advice

[jollyjolly]

my 2 yr old ds has been waking up screaming. my mom says my sister went through the same thing. anyone else had the same thing and is there anything i can do to ease his fear

both of my DS's have done this but before they turned one so not technically night terrors. they were diagnosed with fusional arousal parasomnia.
i found that they occurred more if they were overtired or had missed a nap.

i don't think there is much you can do as they are asleep when it is happening. I think the official advice is not to pick them up, but i always do. I just can't sit and watch them scream.

Mine usually fall asleep again after about 10-15 minutes.

There are quite a few old threads on night terrors. It would be worth doing a search and reading them.
The long and short of it is that there isn't actually much you can do to comfort them while they are having the night terror. The good news is that they supposedly don't remember it in the morning. It's related to sleep walking, so you need to keep an eye out for that for safety (ie if you are in a 2 story house). It's my understanding that stress can trigger the night terrors and I certainly found this to be true with my dd. She had her worst stint of night terrors for the first few months after we moved to the USA (she was almost 3). She then had problems again after switching nurseries a few months later. And I notice them coming on if I'm really stressed out which means it must be picked up by her too. Dd is now almost 6 and gets them a lot less, but still every few months will have a week or two of having them several nights in a row. She usually starts with a bit of wimpering long before having a full blown night terror and I find that if I put her in bed with me I can comfort her enough that the night terror usually doesn't happen.
Good luck, I know how helpless you can feel.