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Child Behavior Problems: Children And Night Terrors

By: Dr. Noel Swanson..

Q. "My 7-year old son wakes up periodically in the middle of the night. We find him sitting bolt upright, staring straight ahead, and screaming at the top of his lungs. He sounds like he's being viciously attacked. This goes on for a while, during which we try to console him. He goes back to sleep without knowing we were even there. If we decide to awaken him, he appears confused, and doesn't remember his dreams".

A. The reason that he cannot remember what he was dreaming about, is that he was not dreaming! What you are describing is a classic case of 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".

Nightmares occur while we are dreaming. They can be as real and as frightening as a Hollywood thriller.

Night terrors, on the other hand, occur in stage four sleep. This is also the stage in which sleepwalking and talking occur. The reason they occur is unknown, and most children grow out of them. They may be worse at times of stress.

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.

Night terrors are common in children aged 3 to 6, and may continue even beyond then. They do not indicate that there is anything seriously wrong with your child. Hard though it may be at the time, the best tactic really is to ignore them, and to try to get some sleep yourself.

Article Source: http://www.healthandwellnesscentral.com

Child Behavior Problems can be solved! To find out how, visit author Dr. Swanson's Child Behavior Problems website and take a look at his very popular book, The GOOD CHILD Guide.


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