There is nothing scarier than your child screaming out in the middle of the night!
Now that’s a parent’s worst nightmare. Am I right?
So let’s talk about it.
How do we know if our child is having a nightmare, night terror, or is just waking up screaming?
It’s hard to assess, especially when you have woken up abruptly in the middle of the night.
So how do you quickly tell the difference?
It’s surprisingly more straightforward than you think.
Nightmares will often happen during dream sleep, most commonly in the latter half of the night (think 3 am and on). This is when we are mostly dreaming and will quickly wake up if we have a bad dream.
Nightmares will likely start at around 2 yrs old, as that is when a child’s imagination starts to develop, and dreams can become specific and scary to them (while babies do dream but are not likely to dream where they are afraid and make sense of it). They might wake in a heightened state and not realize the dream is over. As your toddler/pre-schooler grows, they will start to learn to differentiate between dreams and reality.
Nightmares are a normal part of a child’s development. They help us process emotion and stress. We work through life’s stressors and difficult emotional events during dreams, which can cause us to wake up afraid. It’s a human part of life, and dreams are how our minds process and clear out memories that are not serving us and keeping/storing long-term memories and skills we learned throughout the day.
How we work through them with our child is essential in keeping sleep independence and avoiding new associations that might have you up every night (nightmare or not).
Night Terrors are very different. They are scary. They are often abrupt and intense and happen at the first half of the night (first four hours but usually at the 90 min mark) when your child is in a deep sleep and transitioning to light sleep. Usually, the transition goes smoothly, and your child will be able to fall back into another sleep cycle since sleep pressure is so high, but sometimes that transition is too abrupt, and an episode occurs. During a night terror, your little one is NOT awake, they may seem awake, but they are still sleeping. They might let out a blood-curdling scream, thrash, mumble, sweat, and have their eyes open.
These night terrors don’t last long, and you should never try to wake your child up. They are extremely rare in babies, but 1-6 in 100 children have them, and they are most common around the age of three.
While during a nightmare, your child might be awake afterward and scared. After a night terror, your child will likely go right back to sleep and not remember it ever happened.
They are likely caused by overtiredness or not being in a familiar environment.
Confusional Event this is more of what you might see in babies. It also happens in the first half of the night, and it also has to do with the shifting from NREM (deep sleep) to light sleep. Once our baby hits light sleep, there is a power struggle between sleep pressure (the push to go back to sleep) and the push to wake up. Here is when your little one might moan, fuss, cry out and turn around and go back to sleep. If a parent gets involved at this time, it will cause your baby to wake up fully. Step back and wait before going in. Is your baby awake? Depending on your baby’s temperament, their instinct is to cry, but it’s short, and they will quickly turn around and fall back to sleep.
The thing to remember about each of these is that they require a different response.
Whether you are providing reassurance and comfort, trying to prevent it, or stepping back to respond vs. react, It’s important to understand what is happening and what steps to take.
All of these are not likely to last more than a night, and so your little one should be sleeping well following these hiccups. if this is happening consistently overnight for more than a week and your little is waking an hour after going to sleep or at the same time each night these might be due to schedule or a habitual wake-up. This is when it’s important to assess what it is that is causing it and get a plan together to change it!
It’s time to reach out and see what is happening; getting down to the root of the problem will help you resolve it for good!
Lil xx
*If you are ever concerned about your child’s sleep terrors or think they are in pain please reach out and talk to your doctor or paediatrician.
