[widemouthedfrog]

Yes, I should be asleep. But before I do that, I need some words of wisdom from all of you!

Dd was a horrific sleeper and now sleeps through the night unless she is sick. Well, or unless she wakes up, but I can usually get her back to sleep again. She's almost 4. She's been slightly under the weather the past few days, and she's been waking once a night screaming, obviously from a nightmare, because she says things that are related to something that she must be dreaming.

Normally when she whimpers I don't go into the room, if she wakes I do. This is because my "help" fully wakes her if she is just resettling. We cosleep. However, when I've gone into the room the last few nights to help, she's started to scream and kick me. I'm sure she's still in her dream. When she wakes a little more, she screams and kicks me again and tells me to make her go back to sleep. When I ask her if I can rub her back, nurse, sing, rock, etc...she screams and kicks me and says no, then tells me to make her go to sleep. We've talked about how her body knows how to go to sleep.

Last night I tried many things, then I just sat there and let her cry because she would hurt me and scream more every time I tried to soothe her. Finally she fell asleep.

Any suggestions about things that might help? I suspect that this is linked to a developmental shift: she's recently moved from parallel to joint play, she's worrying about death, things are definitely going on in that head of hers.

Thank you!!!!

 

[octobermom]

We had a huge revist with night terrors at that age (had them start around age 2) and illiness brings them to life again.I'd often go to her like 1 hour after she fell asleep JUST wake her and then let her fall back asleep again this ussually broke the cycle but it it didn't and she had a night terror I had to remember shes was asleep even when her eyes were totally open she was walking around talking shes was sleeping. I often had to do very little if any touching and jsut keep repeating its the middle of the night time to lay down... If I did too much touching or like singing ect it caused further rage.

Deanna

 

[tooticky]

to you and your little one, Tricia....

My ds had what I would describe as night terrors between ages 2 and 3. I'm not sure if you think that is what your dd is experiencing, but when it was happening with us it seemed like the thing that helped resettle him the most quickly was to change venues and have him fully wake up.

Often we would carry him out of the bedroom and downstairs with a dim light on in the livingroom. Once he realized the nightmare was over he would be able to go back to the bedroom.

If we tried to comfort him in the bedroom, in or out of his bed, he would continue screaming and flailing around.

I have night terrors myself, and I can understand why moving from the room helped ds. When I wake up from a nightmare, I can still see the things that were frightening me in my bedroom, with my eyes open. If I try to go right back to sleep, the nightmare just starts again where it left off. Turning on a light, fully awakening helps me to "start again" with the sleep cycle.

HTH!

 

[widemouthedfrog]

yes, erin, I did move her to a different room. That always helped me, too, but it seems to be nightmare combined with extreme frustration at being awake, so having lights on just made her really angry.

Last night she woke, but she just said "up," so I lifted her up a bit, then she asked "up" again, so I put her on my lap sitting up and she fell back to sleep. Was a little concerned I might need to stay there all night in that position (not that I've ever done that before

), but she settled back down.

Yes, Deanna, unless asked I'm definitely not going to do any more touching, since it seems to send her off into a rage.

 

[Astrogirl]

Do a google search for "night terrors" - they are fundamentally different from nightmares in many ways. Touching or trying to help usually will make them worse in that the child perceives an attack. We have them fairly often here with my 4 year old, so I live it constantly - we never know when they are going to occur so we have to be careful with her diet and sleep schedule to try to minimize them.