Night terrors

[shish]

Does anyone know much about night terrors or have much experience with them? My ds (15 and a half months old) started getting these a while back, but last night was particularly bad and went on for over 2 hours.

dd2 had them. In fact, she still has nightmares every night, but hasn't had an actual night terror in a while.

Tis awful, and very frightening for you to watch.

The advice that I was given at the time was really just to be there for her, there is nothing you can do, he will not be aware of your presence until it is all over, you can touch him reassuringly and it may help, but it also may not.

I did find out that they are not particularly related to nightmares and they are not necessarily dreaming about anything bad happening.

Just in case it's reassuring can I say, too, that night terrors differ from nightmares in that there might not be any scary content or actual fear.

I have brief night terrors that involve me shouting out various bits of rubbish. Sometimes I wake myself up and I have no knowledge of any dream, and no residual fear like you have after nightmares. I also dream vividly but this is always unconnected to the 'terrors'

Whoops, I've just realised that comments about dreams might not be very reassuring coming from someone whose name is based on Freddy Krueger.

that'll teach us to change to scary names, eh, thready!

I was told that dd2's night terrors were more frightening for us than for her, and she certainly never seemed to know anything about them when she woke up.

She does get nightmares as well, but they are so totally different as to be a whole different species of night-time stuff

It really was unintentional shish

Hope your ds grows out of it soon. It must be really distressing for you -- even though, hopefully, not for him.

thready - have you always had them?

I sleepwalked a lot as a child. And as an adult I have always been prone to shouting in my sleep. But there have been periods when I do it much less than others. At the moment I shout every night. But in recent years there have been long periods of no shouting. When I lived in college I often used to wake up with a sore throat and wonder why. It was only later that I surmised I had been bellowing!

that's something I forgot to mention, when I was researching this for dd2, I discovered that there is a link with sleepwalking, and it can be hereditary. Dp has always sleepwalked and we think he has passed this on to dd2.

ds is fine though - he would sleep through an earthquake!

That's interesting. I hope all this has been reassuring for the OP.

me too.

Let us know how you get on shish

Thank you guys. It is really frightening. It is almost like he is crying and fitting in his sleep and there is nothing you can do. You can't even wake him up. We were advised to just let him get on with it because no amount of shouting would wake him up, but may in fact frighten him more..