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Ever since we brought our little girl home from China she has been having night terrors. You feel so helpless, the other couple that we traveled with told me that their daughter also experiences night terrors. Is this common? It apprears that there is nothing that can be done. Is that true. Any thoughts/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks Patty Gotcha day Feb. 19, 2006
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Hi Patty, what exactly do you mean by night terrors? I brought my daughter home in July, just last month and she has been sleeping in her crib since I brought her home, but sometimes she wakes up crying. The cry is almost as though she is having a nightmare. The minute she cries I pick her up and put her in my bed and I hold her close to my chest or on top of me and she falls asleep about five to ten minutes later. She then sleeps throughout the night. My daughters crib is in my room, so if she cries I hear her immediately.
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Night terrors usually happen before REM sleep (within a couple of hours after putting her to bed). The cry and screams are blood curling. I pick her up and bring her to our bed where she continues to scream and cry. A parent feels helpless. This can last anywhere from 5 minutes to 30 minutes. The child does not remember a thing. After the first time it happen I mentioned she was having nightmares to our pediatrition and the doctor told me that there were night terror. The first I ever heard of that term. I'm just looking for more information, I want to do something for her so badly, but it appears I can't. I plan to speak to the doctor about this again at our next appointment. Patty
I have a bio daughter who is 2 and has been having some nightmares lately. (we plan to adopt from China in April of next year) I've heard that it's pretty common for this age, but some really scare her and it's like she's in a weird in between stage of sleep and wakefullness. There seems to be nothing that I can do for her. I looked up toddlers and sleep terrors. Hope this helps a little.[FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Putting Parents' Fears to Rest [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Handling Night Terrors [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica]By Laurie Dove [/FONT][FONT=arial,helvetica,helv,swiss,geneva][/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,helv,swiss,geneva]A 2-year-old boy jolts upright in bed, panicked. Eyes wide, mouth circled in a scream, the terror brings his mother running, only to find she can’t reach her son. 
He is trapped betwixt and between – caught within two layers of his own body’s functioning. His mind is asleep, his body awake. He doesn’t respond to his mother’s touch; he struggles to free himself of her grasp. She can do nothing but watch and wait. It will end, she tells herself. But for this Drifton, Penn., mother, it will soon begin again. Each night, Bobbi Dempsey waits for her son’s screams to pierce the dullness of sleep. Dempsey’s son has a sleeping disorder that plagues more than 200,000 kids: night terrors. For parents, night terrors can be frightening to witness. For children – who typically have no recollection of the event – night terrors are little more than an inconvenience, say experts."Every night, my son was screaming and terrified. I thought he had somehow gotten hurt. Sometimes he thought someone was after him. It was a horrible thing to watch him go through," says Dempsey, who resorted to sleeping on the living room couch with her son so she could be near him – and so his screams could be as far as possible from his two brothers. When Sleep Turns ScaryNight terrors strike more than one-third of children in the United States, according to the Washington, D.C.-based National Sleep Foundation. The disorder is particularly common in boys and usually occurs between the ages of 3 and 7, says Dr. John Tedeschi, chairman of Virtua Health West Jersey’s pediatric department. For most children – and worried parents – the episodes are mercifully short-lived, beginning and ending within a few weeks of each other. For others, like Dempsey’s son, night terrors can haunt children for years, hanging on well into the preteen years. Night terrors happen most often when children sleep deeply. Parents who have ever carried a limp child from the car to their bed without waking, understand what it means to have a child in deep sleep. The normal sounds that would arouse a sleeping adult – a slamming car door, rattling house keys, stumbling over hidden toys – don’t awaken these children. Yet, it is during this same deep sleep that a child’s body can jolt into action; when the slumbering body responds to some kind of stimuli, yet the mind stays asleep, night terrors occur – leaving children in a sort of sleep limbo. These sudden, partial awakenings occur most often during the first two hours of sleep and typically begin with a high-pitched scream – which brings panicked parents running – only to find a child appearing awake, pupils dilated, sweat forming and heart racing, says Dr. Stephen Sheldon, director of the Sleep Medicine Center at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, one of five children’s hospitals in the nation accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.“The child may be screaming or yelling something unintelligible which only gets worse when parents try to intervene," Dr. Sheldon says. "When parents start asking questions or touching the child, he becomes even more agitated. Later, he won’t even remember it ever happened.” When Brette McWhorter Sember’s toddler daughter woke up screaming, the Clarence, N.Y., mother found her sitting up in bed, terrified and seemingly unaware of her surroundings. "She woke up screaming but could not hear us. It was as if she was asleep with her eyes open," Sember says. Night Terrors or Nightmare?Night terrors – which have a physiological cause – are very different from nightmares or other night awakenings caused by previous psychological trauma.A few months after Shelia Jordan’s granddaughter was born, the infant survived a car wreck that killed her mother. Today, at 3 years old, Jordan’s granddaughter is haunted by nightmares triggered after she hears loud noises reminiscent of the car crash, Jordan believes.Unlike night terrors, which are largely caused by a physical reaction, nightmares can be caused by the subconscious recollection of a traumatic incident, says Dr. Paul Saskin, clinical director of Sunrise Hospital’s Regional Center for Sleep Disorders in Las Vegas, Nev. The difference between night terrors and nightmares is simple, Dr. Saskin says. With night terrors, the child has an active body and sleeping brain. With nightmares, the opposite is true, enabling the child to recount a nightmare and welcome reassurance from parents. [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Is it a night terror?[LIST][*]"Active body, sleeping brain."[*]Child does not remember anything about the event.[*]Will not respond or react if parents try to console.[*]Usually occurs two to three hours after bedtime.[*]Becomes agitated or violent if awakened.[*]Can move arms and legs to act out imagined fear.[*]Child is active and out of bed; parents must remove dangerous obstacles.[*]Improves/disappears when sleep cycle matures.[/LIST]Is it a nightmare?[LIST][*]"Active brain, sleeping body."[*]Child remembers the event.[*]Welcomes parents’ loving reassurance.[*]Usually occurs in the middle or latter part of the night.[*]Relieved to be awakened, begins to calm down.[*]Temporary muscle paralysis prevents arm or leg movements.[*]Child is not active and parents do not have to remove dangerous obstacles.[*]May continue throughout the child’s life.[/LIST][/FONT]Toddler Terrors, Infant Anxiety?Although little research has been done on the subject, some sleep experts believe not only toddlers – but infants – are affected by night terrors.For Indianapolis, Ind., stay-at-home mom, Krista J. Monson, her 5-month-old daughter’s sudden screaming fits occurring in the middle of a deep sleep have become commonplace. 
The screaming fits, which started when the baby was just 4 months old, were a bit frightening at first, Monson admits. Now, she and her husband simply try to awaken and comfort their daughter when the night terrors begin."I hold her, tell her it is ‘OK‚’ and that we are there," Monson says. "We’ve been told that’s all we can do. The biggest thing is to remain totally calm."Sheldon agrees. Often, his medical advice takes a common sense route, encouraging parents to calm and reassure themselves as well as their children.“If parents are frightened, that can be transmitted to the child, which can make night terrors more frequent and more intense," Dr. Sheldon says. "It’s a vicious cycle of fright.” What Parents Can DoBecause night terrors eventually subside and leave no trace of neurological damage, for many parents and experts treating the disorder becomes a waiting game.Often, the most effective way to prevent night terrors is to limit a child’s stressors. Pediatricians may recommend chronicling nighttime events in a sleep diary and linking night terrors with troublesome daily events.Children who have nightly occurrences for one month or more or who have multiple episodes a night should be evaluated by both a pediatrician and a sleep disorder clinic, says Dr. Tedeschi. “Multi-nightly occurrences of sleep terrors are not of the norm,” says Dr. Sheldon. "If a child has consistent, frequent sleep terrors or there is something unusual about the spells, then the child needs to be evaluated." Other remedies to prevent night terrors can include changing bath time from evening to morning – because it reduces the amount of bedtime stimulation – and gently stroking a child’s skin with a soft brush to relax and comfort before bed. Using a few drops of an essential oil like lavender on a cotton ball near the child’s bed also has been known to bring calmer sleep, Dr. Sheldon says.[/FONT]
[FONT=arial,helvetica,helv,swiss,geneva]A 2-year-old boy jolts upright in bed, panicked. Eyes wide, mouth circled in a scream, the terror brings his mother running, only to find she can’t reach her son. He is trapped betwixt and between – caught within two layers of his own body’s functioning. His mind is asleep, his body awake. He doesn’t respond to his mother’s touch; he struggles to free himself of her grasp. She can do nothing but watch and wait. It will end, she tells herself. But for this Drifton, Penn., mother, it will soon begin again. Each night, Bobbi Dempsey waits for her son’s screams to pierce the dullness of sleep. Dempsey’s son has a sleeping disorder that plagues more than 200,000 kids: night terrors. For parents, night terrors can be frightening to witness. For children – who typically have no recollection of the event – night terrors are little more than an inconvenience, say experts."Every night, my son was screaming and terrified. I thought he had somehow gotten hurt. Sometimes he thought someone was after him. It was a horrible thing to watch him go through," says Dempsey, who resorted to sleeping on the living room couch with her son so she could be near him – and so his screams could be as far as possible from his two brothers. When Sleep Turns ScaryNight terrors strike more than one-third of children in the United States, according to the Washington, D.C.-based National Sleep Foundation. The disorder is particularly common in boys and usually occurs between the ages of 3 and 7, says Dr. John Tedeschi, chairman of Virtua Health West Jersey’s pediatric department. For most children – and worried parents – the episodes are mercifully short-lived, beginning and ending within a few weeks of each other. For others, like Dempsey’s son, night terrors can haunt children for years, hanging on well into the preteen years. Night terrors happen most often when children sleep deeply. Parents who have ever carried a limp child from the car to their bed without waking, understand what it means to have a child in deep sleep. The normal sounds that would arouse a sleeping adult – a slamming car door, rattling house keys, stumbling over hidden toys – don’t awaken these children. Yet, it is during this same deep sleep that a child’s body can jolt into action; when the slumbering body responds to some kind of stimuli, yet the mind stays asleep, night terrors occur – leaving children in a sort of sleep limbo. These sudden, partial awakenings occur most often during the first two hours of sleep and typically begin with a high-pitched scream – which brings panicked parents running – only to find a child appearing awake, pupils dilated, sweat forming and heart racing, says Dr. Stephen Sheldon, director of the Sleep Medicine Center at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, one of five children’s hospitals in the nation accredited by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.“The child may be screaming or yelling something unintelligible which only gets worse when parents try to intervene," Dr. Sheldon says. "When parents start asking questions or touching the child, he becomes even more agitated. Later, he won’t even remember it ever happened.” When Brette McWhorter Sember’s toddler daughter woke up screaming, the Clarence, N.Y., mother found her sitting up in bed, terrified and seemingly unaware of her surroundings. "She woke up screaming but could not hear us. It was as if she was asleep with her eyes open," Sember says. Night Terrors or Nightmare?Night terrors – which have a physiological cause – are very different from nightmares or other night awakenings caused by previous psychological trauma.A few months after Shelia Jordan’s granddaughter was born, the infant survived a car wreck that killed her mother. Today, at 3 years old, Jordan’s granddaughter is haunted by nightmares triggered after she hears loud noises reminiscent of the car crash, Jordan believes.Unlike night terrors, which are largely caused by a physical reaction, nightmares can be caused by the subconscious recollection of a traumatic incident, says Dr. Paul Saskin, clinical director of Sunrise Hospital’s Regional Center for Sleep Disorders in Las Vegas, Nev. The difference between night terrors and nightmares is simple, Dr. Saskin says. With night terrors, the child has an active body and sleeping brain. With nightmares, the opposite is true, enabling the child to recount a nightmare and welcome reassurance from parents. [FONT=Arial,Helvetica]Is it a night terror?[LIST][*]"Active body, sleeping brain."[*]Child does not remember anything about the event.[*]Will not respond or react if parents try to console.[*]Usually occurs two to three hours after bedtime.[*]Becomes agitated or violent if awakened.[*]Can move arms and legs to act out imagined fear.[*]Child is active and out of bed; parents must remove dangerous obstacles.[*]Improves/disappears when sleep cycle matures.[/LIST]Is it a nightmare?[LIST][*]"Active brain, sleeping body."[*]Child remembers the event.[*]Welcomes parents’ loving reassurance.[*]Usually occurs in the middle or latter part of the night.[*]Relieved to be awakened, begins to calm down.[*]Temporary muscle paralysis prevents arm or leg movements.[*]Child is not active and parents do not have to remove dangerous obstacles.[*]May continue throughout the child’s life.[/LIST][/FONT]Toddler Terrors, Infant Anxiety?Although little research has been done on the subject, some sleep experts believe not only toddlers – but infants – are affected by night terrors.For Indianapolis, Ind., stay-at-home mom, Krista J. Monson, her 5-month-old daughter’s sudden screaming fits occurring in the middle of a deep sleep have become commonplace. The screaming fits, which started when the baby was just 4 months old, were a bit frightening at first, Monson admits. Now, she and her husband simply try to awaken and comfort their daughter when the night terrors begin."I hold her, tell her it is ‘OK‚’ and that we are there," Monson says. "We’ve been told that’s all we can do. The biggest thing is to remain totally calm."Sheldon agrees. Often, his medical advice takes a common sense route, encouraging parents to calm and reassure themselves as well as their children.“If parents are frightened, that can be transmitted to the child, which can make night terrors more frequent and more intense," Dr. Sheldon says. "It’s a vicious cycle of fright.” What Parents Can DoBecause night terrors eventually subside and leave no trace of neurological damage, for many parents and experts treating the disorder becomes a waiting game.Often, the most effective way to prevent night terrors is to limit a child’s stressors. Pediatricians may recommend chronicling nighttime events in a sleep diary and linking night terrors with troublesome daily events.Children who have nightly occurrences for one month or more or who have multiple episodes a night should be evaluated by both a pediatrician and a sleep disorder clinic, says Dr. Tedeschi. “Multi-nightly occurrences of sleep terrors are not of the norm,” says Dr. Sheldon. "If a child has consistent, frequent sleep terrors or there is something unusual about the spells, then the child needs to be evaluated." Other remedies to prevent night terrors can include changing bath time from evening to morning – because it reduces the amount of bedtime stimulation – and gently stroking a child’s skin with a soft brush to relax and comfort before bed. Using a few drops of an essential oil like lavender on a cotton ball near the child’s bed also has been known to bring calmer sleep, Dr. Sheldon says.[/FONT] 
[FONT=Comic Sans MS]Patty,[/FONT][FONT=Comic Sans MS]My son has suffered with both nightmares and night terrors...I'll look back to see if I can find the thread but I agree it is awful being so helpless.[/FONT] [FONT=Comic Sans MS]If I remembe correctly, one thing that was suggested more than once was to wake them BEFORE they get the night terror. Are hers always about the same time into her sleep? If so, wake her...it is supposed to help break the cycle. [/FONT] [FONT=Comic Sans MS]Our son had so many issues he needed to work through and I feel this was part of his healing...[/FONT] [FONT=Comic Sans MS]All the best...sleep issues are the worst...our poor son struggled for 23 months home before finally sleeping. :eek: [/FONT] [FONT=Comic Sans MS]***ETA~ This is a great time to plug heavy attachment parenting...the more your child feels secure during her waking hours, the better she will sleep. I would also suggest co-sleeping if at all possible. I was hugely against this until I got my attachment disordered son into my life...then I was willing to try anything to get the kid to sleep...;) in many cases it helps immensely.[/FONT]
My bio 6yr old has night terrors still, although very few and far between...my 7 yr old outgrew them by 3...anyway, my six yr old just had a night terror a few nights ago, he looked right through me and asked for mommy...it takes me about 5-10 minutes to calm him and get him back to sleep (at least that is what I think I am doing, since it seems he is not really awake and does not acknowledge me), if he cries too long he will vomit...and in the morning he will not remember a thing, not so much as a bad dream or on the nights he is throwing up. It is obviously much harder on the parents than the kids, they will eventually outgrow it, but be rest assured there are quite a few of us going through it with you and it is common. Good luck!
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I think it is more common than we thought. I adopted domestically and my daughter went through about a month of night terrors. It didn't matter what I did she wouldn't wake up and just screamed and cryed for about 30 minutes. Then one night it just stopped. Good luck and yes it is very painful to watch your child like this.
We have a 6.5 bio child that had night terrors for about 1.5 yrs when she was between 2.5-4. I am a peds RN, and still they scared me. I first tried to wake her and it only intensified the terror. So after reading my peds nursing book, I realized there was nothing I could do to stop it. I could only make sure she stayed safe during it. I did find a link between how tired she was and when she would have a night terror. I could almost predict it on some nights. We are just starting the adoption process and at the FWCC pool party the other night a mom was saying her daughter was having night terrors and I think it relieved her that my bio daughter had experienced them also--not that she wished them on my daughter, but that it is not only adopted daughters experiencing them. My daughter (at 6.5) will still very occasionally have them when she is exhaused, and has no memory of it in the morning. My point being, hang in there, and like my ped MD said sometines it seems tougher on the parent than the child.
Hi, Our daughter, adopted at the age of 14 months, had night terrors for about the first 8-9 months home. The first time she had one, it scared me to death. In her case, they happened almost exclusively during nap times. Night time sleep was easier for her than nap time. Over time, I saw a slight pattern to when they would occur. Usually it happened when she was overtired. What worked for us, may sound completely weird to everyone else. I had read that some research had found truth in an old wives tale. The old wives tale was to stop a night terror, you put a persons foot in cold water (not particularily nice eh?) What the research found was that for some people there was a link between overheating and the fight/flight sequence being triggered during a night terror. So the suggestion was to cool off your child with a damp wash cloth. It sounded unusual to me, but I figured it couldn't hurt. So, we stopped using the footed pj's and switched to pj's paired with socks. If she started having a night terror, I'd remove her socks and place a cool wash cloth on her feet, sooth her etc. As weird as it sounds, it'd stop the night terror immediately. I will point out that our daughter is a little furnace. She just is a warmer child in general and doesn't do well being very bundled. I hope you find a solution because I know how stressfull and helpless of a feeling it is. Take care, Melissa
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I'd say one major difference between what I experienced with Morgan and that mentioned in the article posted here is that Mo would not open her eyes during the outburst...but her terror was prolonged and unresponsive. This was not a matter of wailing from a bad dream - she would SCREAM and no matter how I held her while trying to comfort her, she did not acknowledge my presence. It is a horrible thing to witness. It scared me every single time. For the first year, these events would occur frequently, most often at night but occasionally during a nap (once or twice in her car seat). Now she only has an outburst every few months, still linked to over-excitement or particular activities. Interesting note; when I mentioned this to my pediatrician, she told me that most research does not support the idea that children under 2 actually dream...but anyone who has sat through this knows the child is recalling something terrible.
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