The next thing you know there’s a blood curdling noise coming from your child’s bedroom, you drop everything and rush to your child’s room only to find them writhing around screaming louder than you’ve ever heard them scream before and starring into space, teary eyed and looking absolutely terrified. The more you try to comfort them the more hysterical they are becoming, there’s no signs of them being hurt or sick, what on earth could it be?

Welcome to the world of Night Terrors!

Night Terrors are a relatively common occurrence that can happen to people of all ages but that generally affect young children, typically between the ages of 3 to 5 years, but in some cases as young as 6 months, that occur during sleep which go by many different names ranging from the self explanatory to the bafflingly scientific including; Sleep terrors, Sleep Terror disorder, Pavor Nocturnus and the strangest one of them all DSM-IV AXIS I : 307.46!

Night terrors are often mistaken for nightmares but are in fact completely different. Nightmares occur during the dream phase of sleep known as REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. After approximately 90 minutes of sleep most people enter the REM phase which is marked by extensive physiological changes, such as accelerated respiration, increased brain activity, eye movement and muscle relaxation. The REM phase of sleep is when we dream. Night terrors on the other hand happen during a deep non-REM phase of sleep that normally occurs between one and two hours into the sleep pattern and unlike nightmares most sufferers will wake with no recollection of the episode other then a strong feeling of fear and extreme anxiety.

Children will usually have night terrors at approximately the same time each night, generally sometime in the first few hours after falling asleep. Some doctors suggest waking your child up 30 minutes before the time the child seems to have their night terror and keeping them up for five minutes or so before helping them back off to sleep again in order to break the psychological cycle.

Symptoms of Night terrors can include; sudden awakening from sleep, persistent fear and terror at night, screaming, sweating, extreme confusion, spasms, rapid heart rate, hallucinations such as spiders, snakes or other people as well as appearing awake with eyes wide open whilst being unable to explain what’s happening or where they are when asked, this is because although the sufferer appears to be wide awake they are infact still asleep. Sufferers are often difficult to fully awake and are extremely difficult to comfort.

Night terrors can last anything from 5 to 20 minutes and are thought to be hereditary and caused by a multitude of factors such as stress or over tiredness.

Paul Dwyer, 28 had first hand experience of night terrors when his eldest daughter Millie began experiencing them when she was about a year old.

‘’ they occurred with alarming regularity, sometimes 4 or 5 times a week. They were terrifying for both her and us, she would go to bed as normal each night but after an hour or so we would hear her screaming. When we entered her room she would be sitting bolt upright in her bed with sweat pouring down her face, we naturally tried to comfort her but this just seemed to make it worse. We quickly learnt that during a night terror she didn’t recognize us, my partner would try to hold her but she would just twist and spasm free all the time screaming for her mummy. We learnt over time to ride out the terror with reassuring words but without using physical contact all the time ensuring she couldn’t hurt herself. Watching your child writhe and scream in terror is very hard to deal with, in particular for my partner Sarah who found this most upsetting. Once the terror was over she would go back to sleep. We racked our brains to try to find a pattern that broke the pattern experimenting with different bedtime routines but to no avail, in the end we noticed that the night terrors occurred after particularly busy days when we had got home later than normal. We stopped staying late when visiting our parents and friends and making sure that we got her to bed earlier to ensure she was not over tired. The results were immediate with the terrors dropping to one or two a week for the first few months and by the time of her second birthday they were virtually non existent. We are still caught out every now and again but things are much better’’.