Tips To Help Your Child Beat Night Terrors

While common and unsettling, staying calm and composed is the best way to help your child beat night terrors.

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It is late into the night. You are awakened by your child’s incessant screams, and upon rushing to his room, you see him sitting up in bed, seemingly awake but looking dazed and confused. Talking to him does not seem to elicit a response, and neither do your attempts to comfort him. A situation like this would usually make you conclude that all your little one had was a bad dream and encourage him to go back to sleep. But is there more than meets the eye?

What may seem like a common nightmare on the surface may actually be night terror, which exhibits similarities to nightmares but takes place on a far more dramatic scale. Humans spend about roughly a third of their lives sleeping, and this percentage is significantly higher for kids in their infancy and early childhood phases of development.

That said, while sleep – especially quality sleep – is vital to the physical and mental growth in children, sleep disorders and problems are also very prevalent and strike across the age spectrum. According to experts, sleep disorders affect 25 to 50 percent of babies aged six to 12 months, and 15 to 20 percent of toddlers. So how can parents decipher between nightmares and night terrors to ensure their child’s forty winks is not compromised?

Knowing The Enemies Of Slumber