Night Terror, or sleep terror a.k.a. pavor nocturnus, is a type of sleep disruption that affects children from age 2 to 8 and their concerned parents. It’s easy to confuse nightmares and night terror instances for those who’ve never dealt with them before, but if your own child suffers from night terrors, you’ll know the difference.
We’ve all seen nightmares, but night terrors are more dramatically manifested, being characterized by an extreme degree of terror, sometimes screaming, moaning, confusion, disorientation, unresponsiveness and inability of your kid to get back to his/her senses. Consolation hardly works, and the child will often go back to sleep without fully waking up. There will be no recollection of the incident the next morning, but it will surely come back the following night, and the night after that until the symptoms abruptly disappear.
While it does seem like a lot to handle for both, the kid and the parents, doctors claim night terrors do not hurt children psychologically and there is nothing to be concerned about. There isn’t a unanimous claim about what may be causing these disruptive patterns, but specialists say stress, bad sleeping habits, fatigue, unresolved psychological conflicts, traumatic events and the like may be among the most common culprits, so fighting these causes may help your child battle night terrors efficiently.
This article suggests that
…the parents should determine when the night terrors usually occur and fully awaken the child about 15 minutes before that time. After 4 or 5 minutes, the child can return to sleep. The waking is discontinued once the terrors stop, which in most circumstances is usually within a week.
In severe cases of night terrors the doctor may prescribe an antidepressant such as imipramine (Tofranil) or a benzodiazepine drug called chlordiazepoxide which relieves nervousness or tension and also treats insomnia.
However, please make sure that you’ve tried eliminating the possible causes of this sleep disruption before you drug your kid. After all, night terrors in children usually disappear with time and don’t require any medication.