violent 4am outbursts in 3yo

[patricegonzales]

(We bedshare) My 3yo has been having regular 4am violent outbursts. I have woken up to her bitting me, hitting, kicking punching, all in all having a complete melt down. She is not completely asleep, but not fully awake. I can talk to her and she will answer most of the time. I do not think its night terrors, but could be wrong. She does not have these types of violent melt downs during waking hours.

Any ideas on what this could be?

[elmh23]

Sounds exactly like night terrors to me, though it would be on the extreme end! How often have these happened?

[~Charlie's~Angel~]

FWIW, I can carry on an entire conversation with my husband in the night/early morning hours, and when hes OUT of bed, he won't remember ANY of it. And sometimes we have had arguments later because some of the things he has said "in his sleep" are less then desireable.

So my vote is nightterrors. Does she remember any of it later?

[Mrsboyko]

Night terrors. My DD goes thru this she is going thru a growth spurt, or if it is really hot in our room (summer w/o air conditioning...). It is not a habbit I like to promote, but the only way we snapperd her out of it was to offer food. A bananaa or a few pieces of meat usually took care of it. Other than that, there is no communicating with her at all, everything I can think that we tried made it worse. It is so scary to be completely helpless like that.

[patricegonzales]

Thank you for the quick responses.
The first one was about 6 months ago. They seem to be getting more frequent. They used to be once every 2-3 weeks but have happened the past three nights in a row. She says that she remembers it, but I dont know if she really does. I get the impression that she doesnt.
During night terrors, the child could still be responsive? I didnt know this. Goodness this is scary! Where do we go from here? What can I do?

Thank you again!

[treespeak]

Well, I haven't done a lot of research to confirm this, but after DS had a couple night terrors when he was two, I asked our sweet family doctor about it. Dr. said that basically, the part of the brain that should turn off dreams when the child wakes doesn't do so--hence the child is both awake and dreaming...pretty scary I'd imagine. So perhaps your DD is having a nightmare and you become a character in it--and that's why she's kicking and biting you. The best thing I found for DS's terrors was to stay quiet, keep it dark, and just help him get back to sleep. In your situation, I'd probably quietly withdraw but otherwise keep it quiet and dark, realizing that whatever you do is going to be filtered through her dream scenario.

[aris99]

http://www.drhull.com/EncyMaster/C/c..._arousals.html

I've been punched, hit and bitten...hang in there!