My Child Is Not Sleeping Well. Does He Have Night Terrors? – Being Parents

Both children and adults go through different phases during sleep and may experience nightmares or night terrors. But, how to differentiate them? Knowing how to differentiate them is important to know how to treat them when they arise.

Night terrors are mysterious, they are inexplicable disorders that occur when the child is in a deep sleep without really being really dreaming. It happens when the child starts to cry or even gets up from bed.

It may even happen that his eyes are open or that they seem to be awake but in reality he is well asleep (he is not able to be aware of what is going on around him).

Night terrors are not very common and only a small percentage of children are subject to them, only between 3% and 6% of children worldwide. Although some may also have it for up to 18 months after birth.

The majority of children start to experience this problem around 4-5 years old and become a real family problem if they are frequent.

Differentiate between night terrors and nightmares

Although it can appear as night terrors on many occasions, they are simply nightmares. The two are actually relatively different sleep problems.

Nightmares occur during the REM phase of sleep or rapid eye movements, it is also a phase in which the child is dreaming.

If your child is having a nightmare, it is most likely that he remembers exactly what he dreamed of and what scared him (when he can talk and communicate it to you of course).

Night terrors, on the other hand, occur outside of the REM phase of sleep. A child can experience night terrors when they are in a transition phase of sleep. This may take a few seconds or several minutes.

Since non-REM sleep is a deep stage of sleep, your child will not be aware of what is happening and will not have any remembered images or sensations the next morning because he is not. not in a phase of sleep.

What are the causes and symptoms of night terrors in toddlers?

Causes of night terrors

Your child’s night terrors can have many origins, here are some of them:

• be sick or have a fever
• stressful life events
• not sleeping well or being sleep deprived

• anesthesia given by recent surgery
• drugs that may have certain effects on the brain or central nervous system

Signs that show they are night terrors

Night terrors are more common in children not yet of school age. You can observe that this usually happens during the deepest part of your child’s sleep, normally around the time he starts his night.

You can tell your child is having night terrors by paying attention to the following signs:

• uncontrollable crying
• kicking, screaming or kicking
• he looks stunned
• the child seems to struggle
• he seems in shock, he is sweating or breathing quickly
• he doesn’t recognize you although his eyes are open

Night terrors can last for several minutes, but the longest episodes can last up to 45 minutes, although it may not seem like much.

It is also likely that after his episode of nocturnal terror your child will return to sleep peacefully and when he wakes up the next day he will not even remember what happened.

On the other hand, with a nightmare, he will remember his disturbing dream and he will certainly have difficulty going back to bed for fear of nightmares.

In the case of nightmares it is necessary that your child feels that you are by his side and that it was just a dream and that it is in the past.

As for the night terrors it is important that you go and help him but without trying to wake him up and above all, by eliminating the objects that could hinder his movements to prevent him from getting hurt during an episode of night terrors.