I am struggling with the 4 year old's night terrors.
Most nights she is fine.
But some nights - and seemingly always nights when her dad is away! she does really miss seeing him in the evenings and gets upset - she has recently been starting the night-terrors routine, seems maybe 5% aware that I am present, but unable to talk. Can nod sometimes to questions e.g. "Are you okay?"
Mostly just gut-wrenching screaming and thrashing about. I can't predict when this is going to happen, there seems to be little pattern to it.
The problem is that it is waking up the 1 year old, who is a shit evening sleeper at the best of times. She seems to be in a panic when she hears her sister screaming. Their rooms are adjacent. The house isn't big enough to put either of them to sleep anywhere else. I have tried shutting doors etc. but nothing seems to help.
I don't seem to have an action plan for dealing with this situation. I end up with two SCREAMING children and I am unable to comfort either of them. Last night this went on until 11pm when DH arrived home from college and managed to wake up the 4 year old. He is able to carry her into cool parts of the house and she wakes up. After that she was fine. I am not strong enough to do this especially when she is thrashing around.
I feel like it is going really tits up when things get this bad and I don't really have an idea of what to do - who to sit with/comfort. There doesn't seem to be any way of stopping the screaming.
Any ideas welcome!