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Parenting Advice: My Son Has Night Terrors
By Dr. Noel Swanson
Q. "My seven year old boy sometimes awakens screaming in the middle of the night. When we go into his room he is sitting straight up in bed, staring straight ahead. We try to calm him down but he isn't even aware that we are in his room. After a few minutes, he goes back to sleep. If we awaken him, he doesn't even know why we're there, as he remembers nothing about his dream."
A. Your little boy doesn't remember his dream because he wasn't dreaming. It sounds as if he's experiencing night terrors.
Sleep is a process of different stages. Stage one is when we first drift off. For about ninety minutes we go through stages, two and three, and then enter our deepest sleep, stage four. Experts have learned this from studying brain wave activity (EEG).
Surprisingly, we do not dream during any of these four stages of sleep. Indeed, if you wake someone up at this point, they will remember either nothing, or they might say they were "thinking".
As the four stages fade, we fall into a totally different sleep mode known as "rapid eye movement" (REM). This is the time in which we dream. If you could watch someone during REM sleep, you'd see their eyes darting from side to side. Throughout the night we go in and out of REM sleep. We usually dream for approximately 45 minutes before returning to non- REM sleep, which lasts for an hour or so, and then back to a REM sleep state. As the night progresses the non-REM stages become lighter. This explains an old saying, "an hour before midnight is worth two after".
If we have nightmares,
they occur while we are dreaming. They can be full blown horror movie experiences and very frightening.
Night terrors are something different altogether. They happen in stage four of sleep. Sleepwalkers and talkers are active during this stage as well. No one knows what causes night terrors, but fortunately most children do outgrow them. Sometimes stress seems to amplify them.
Although very alarming, and most distressing to the rest of the family, night terrors cause no harm to the child himself. Indeed, if you can possibly bear it, the best tactic is to not wake him. As you have said, after a while, he just goes back to sleep by himself. The same also applies to sleepwalking, when the goal is simply to make sure the child is safe in his wanderings, and. that he cannot fall down the stairs or out of a window.
Children aged from 3 to 6 are usually the ones who experience night terrors. Sometimes they continue for a little longer. Of course they are hard to ignore, but it truly is best not to awaken them. You need your rest too, although it is difficult to sleep through a night terror event. Dr. Noel Swanson has a free newsletter with expert advice and also frequently writes for Yes Parenting website.
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