does this sound like night terrors

[raggedyanna]

the last 2 nights ds (3.10)has woken about 1.5 - 2hours after going to sleep. He is really upset, calling out and very confused. He does recognise us but makes no sense what so ever and is very hard to calm down. Last night we ended up getting him some paracetamol as he was so upset he was coughing and almost making himself sick and was first time he had done this sort of thing. tonight we just consoled as best as we could. Both nights he has kicked his legs around violently like when having a tantrum. Is this consistent with night terrors or is it somthing else. Also if it is night terrors how often is he likely to get them, how best to comfort him etc thank you

It does sound like night terrors. Does he remember anything about them in the morning?

Dd1 gets these, on and off, in phases. She thrashes her legs, stares, shakes and can't talk coherently. The one thing that always helps (for her) is a wee on the loo, oddly enough. She is always fine afterwards, and has no memory of it the next day.

She had them every night for a few weeks, then none for ages, then a little spurt again. I find there is no point talking much beyond soothing noises - she was still asleep so couldn't really 'see' or 'hear' me. Carrying her to the loo woke her up a bit more so she was able to settle back down to 'proper' sleep iyswim.

yes it sounds just like ds1. he rants and raves and talks gibberish.

ds has been having them for a few years now and we don't know what riggers them. sometimes he'll go ages witout one and sometimes he has 3 a week.

Yep, it does sound like night terrors.
DD1 had these from very early on.

She used to 'terror' at approx the same time every night...
She would walk, talk, scream , shout, cry.

She is 9 now and only experiences them every couple of months.

Like wessexgirl, i used to stick her on the toilet before putting her back to bed.

I used to just comfort her with touch and speech until she went back to sleep.

We were advised to wake her before the night terror episode in order to break the cycle, this was difficult to do.

Hope this is helpful, although by the time i've typed and posted, there'll probably be some expert advice below me

OOoh, and it helped me to know that she had no awareness or memory of her behaviour.

my DS1 (3.7) occasionally gets them and does all that too - again he is better after a wee (strange) then goes straight back to sleep. Once he was so bad and wouldn't calm down that I had to shout to wake up - he is always still asleep when this is going on.

thank you all, very reassuring. i did google them but it said that children don't recognise you but ds definately does but he still talks nonsense. Not sure if he remembers or not after the first one I asked him did he remember waking up and the savvy wee toad said "oh yes, I better come in your bed tomorrow mum" so not sure if he really remembered or just thought he might be onto a good thing
thanks again for all the replies though...we are off on a camper trip in August so I hope that it is resolved then (arggh, stuck in camper with screaming incoherant child emoticon)