Night Terrors

Liz342

My 3 year old DD recently started having night terrors.  She has had maybe 5 of them in the past month or two.  She has mainly had them on days she missed her nap.  She is in the process of outgrowing her nap so it's not really something I can control.  I put her to bed a little earlier on nights she doesn't nap.

I am kind of confused because she went through a huge no-nap streak when she was about 2 and would be really overtired and cranky but never had a NT.  I am guessing it's just something she was too young for at that point.

We are dealing with them alright but everything I find says "my son grew out of them when he was 10" etc.  Does this mean she will likely have these for several more years?  Do some kids just have them over a short period of time and then they disappear?

They are starting to happen more frequently- maybe once a week.  Previous ones only lasted 5 minutes but tonight she had one that was probably 10 minutes and she would keep calming down and then start screaming again so I am afraid they are going to get worse.

I'm going to call the pedi tomorrow but am nervous because I read some things that said a lot of pedis are not very well versed with them.

Any info would be great!! TIA

katmacwv

Is your D on any medications?  When we put DD on Singular due to coughing, her behavior totally changed (for the worse) and she started waking up at night screaming and crying.  DH did some online research and discovered NT and the other behavioral problems were more common than you would think with Singular.  We took her off of Singular and within a week noticed she was much more herself.

kes77

Our oldest has had night terrors in the past.  What our pediatrician told us to do is to gently rouse her or wake her right before we go to bed (which is about 10ish - she goes to bed at 7-7:30 because she doesn't nap anymore) and by doing so that breaks the sleep cycle they get into which causes the night terrors.  I forgot exactly how the pediatrician explained it but it has helped us.  Good luck!

la79al

DD1 had NT for several months and it got to the point where it was 2 a night for most nights out of the week.  Luckily, in the past month or so, they have disappeared completely.