2 1/2 yr old waking up S.C.R.E.A.M.I.NG every night

[blossomnatalia]

I told myself it was a phase...but 2 years of it.....I have enough of it.
Can't figure out wether it is physical, emotional or spiritual....
There has been ups and down but she is back full force.

Where dh and I start to think it might be spiritual attacks is that she wakes up EVERYTIME I am about to fall asleep. Everytime.
Last night I actually thought that it was not going to apply because she woke up before I went to bed. But then, when I went to bed and was drifting to sleep...there she was screaming bloody murder for whatever reason I can't figure out.

She won't be consoled, she kicks and scream, doesn't want anything in particular (it can eaily last an hour).... YES it may be night terrors but then ....what do I do? How do you solve it? When will she outgrow it?
Could it still be spiritual?

I really think she has got an irrational fear of death that goes back to her experience in the womb (where I thought I was m/c for weeks and weeks because I kept bleeding....I completely denied my pregnancy until I was almost half way) I went to healing prayer for that and it was getting much better at night. But she did not come with me. ANd I am wondering if she would need to be prayed for.

I also want to add...I am reading "the explosive child" and I think so far Maya fits the profile perfectly (during the day). It might explain her exploding like so at night but I don't know if the book touches that at all.


ANY input?

Does it sounds like a phase she will outgrow or do I need to be concerned?

I am about done with it,....I can't sleep...it is like having a colicky new born for 2 years and a half!!!

[klpmommy]

just getting offline and :nak toboot

def sounds like NTs. I will bbl- P has had them since he was 13 m/o. we have a few strategies that help

:hug2 NTs stink

[blossomnatalia]

Thank you... I can't wait to hear what works for you....

[klpmommy]

I'm so glad you bumped this, I had forgotten about it. :O :doh sorry!!!

First- if you can figure out the triggers it can help. For P it is being overtired (very common with NTs, btw). So I do my best to make sure that he doesn't get overtired or if I suspect overtired I will put him to bed 15 min early. I haven't figured out any other triggers for him.

Second- this is great if you know that they are happening at a consistent time- *before* the night terror starts go into the room, gently distrupt her sleep pattern. This seems to "reset" the sleep & prevent a night terror. So with P if I suspect he is going to have a NT or if he has been having them recently I will pick a time prior to when they are likely to happen, go to his room, pick him up onto my lap & gently rock him in my lap for a minute or two. If he has already started the NT this doesn't help one bit, but if I get to him before it starts it does & will often prevent it from starting at all.

Third- the only thing I can do if it starts is to ride it out with him. They are exactly like you describe- screaming, inconsolable, etc. They are horrible & scary. I keep hoping he will grow out of them, but he is 5 now & had one last week.

I know one mom had success with giving benedryl at night to stop the NT's- I think it was GodChick, but I could be wrong. You might ask her about it, esp since this is eery night & for such a long period of time. But it won't hurt to try some of these other things first or as well.

Not a lot is known about NTs (based on my research) but what I have learned is that they are related to sleep talking & sleep walking & they have a genetic component. I know that dh walked in his sleep as a kid so that is partly where P gets it.

[blossomnatalia]

That is a good idea to go there before and *waking* her up....

I would be a little hesitant to do so.... but it is worth a try.
The thing is she doesn't do it only once, and by the second or third time she just comes up... a little less upset and comes in my bed.... sometimes crying herself to sleep.

I don't sleep good when she is in my bed because I am scared to wake her up.... Don't want her to scream and kick for another hour :no2


I did research NT a little while ago... it did sound like it....but it does sound little different also.

She does not really do it at the same time anymore. Like I said it is whenever I fall asleep most times or completely at a random time like 4:00 pm...

She does not take a nap anymore (I know, I know , she def should) I just quit not too long ago as nap time just turned into nightmares for everyone. It was a source of stress and punitive reactions and hours of crying (she is extremely "explosive" shall I say) .....
But she does go to bed earlier and very easily and sleeps longer in the morning. Some days she ends up taking a nap (unplanned) and she still wakes up the same at night ... so I don't really know if that is her trigger.

But don't you think there is got to be something spirtual going on? Why don't they know the causes of it?
It is just too wierd for me.

I don't know of anybody sleep walking or talking except my cousin.... (pretty scary and intense episodes actually) but we all knew she had a lot of anger and resentment issues with her mom and so on... and it was not a surprise that it would come out this way.

Do you think if I help her cope with her frustration tolerance and fexibility issues during the day, it would help her with dealing with frustration at night... where at least she could express herself without freaking out?
Sometimes it looks like she is asleep still but sometimes she is just having one of those explosions that can't be stopped even though you give her what she is screaming for. (like she does during the day)


I am sorry I am trying to figure it all out right here. :O

Thank you so much for your input.

[WI Mama05]

I agree with klpmommy. Rachel had night terrors for YEARS! Couldn't figure out what was "wrong" with her and felt like a horribly mom becuase I couldn't make her stop!.

I think for Rachel, she peaked around 2 and then by 3 - 3.5 they were almost completely gone. She still has one VERY occasionally, but nothing like the almost every night she was doing! :phew My DD gave up naps very early on too and once dinner came, she was (is LOL) exhausted and ready for bed. I couldn't do anything about it - just her natural rythm.

I read once that it has to do with the natural transitions from the sleep stages being interrupted and the inability to gently go from one to another causing the night terror. I don't think it's a spiritual thing, but a "grow out of it" kind of thing. I wish they did know more about them, but honestly, it's so hard to reseach sleep patterns in babies and young children, I don't know how they could without it being invasive. :hug2

I think the advice you got from Kimberly was awesome. Actually, thinking about it now, one reason she might not be having them anymore is because DH almost ALWAYS takes her to the bathroom before he goes to bed. Maybe that "resets" her and prevents them at this point. :think

:hug2

[klpmommy]

I really don't know if it could be spiritual. :shrug I am pretty sure P's aren't.

The thing is- I don't really wake P up when I go in. I just break the sleep cycle. He doesn't even open his eyes when I do it. I literally go in, put him on my lap & rock him for a minute or two, then put him back down. I would *not* wake him up fully b/c of the following nightmare to get him back to sleep.

Mine didn't nap at 2.5 either. They actually got less sleep when they napped.

If I wake P up during his NT he will have one or two more that same night. Sometimes even if he doesn't wake during the night terror he will still have a second one, but it is never as intense as the first one unless he woke up fully during the first one.

P will sometimes make unreasonable "demands" in the midst of a NT "NO! I don't want the eight, I want the six!" (Yes, he said this one time). I just nod & agree with him. He doesn't remember it anyway so I could promise him all sorts of new stuff to help him stay calm. Doesn't work with E, however, she doesn't NT & if she makes a demand in the middle of the night she remembers my response!!!!

[Rabbit]

I had night terrors as a child. It doesn't take a dramatic family history to still be genetic. The only family story about sleep walking / talking is about a cousin, who would sleep walk to pee in strange places. As a college student, he once peed on the new clothes his father had just bought for a sort of fostered friend the family had taken in. Sure seemed like he was acting out, but it wasn't spiritual or because he was abused or had unresolved anger issues.

My night terrors peaked at 18 months, and scared my parents half to death. They tried to do an MRI or other brain scan, but to do such scans, they have to get the patient to sleep inside the machine. Ha, ha, ha! Drugs didn't work to get me to sleep, so I was sent home without the scan. The trick that worked from my mother was to move me out of the crib, as I was getting injured during the screaming fits anyway, and put me into a twin bed, with pillows beside it to catch me when I rolled. The night terrors stopped. Could be the bed had a more comfortable mattress that fostered better sleep. Could be that it was simply a change. Whatever it was, it worked, and they stopped. Very rarely, I talk in my sleep.

Because your child has symptoms of big problems during the day, too, with unusually intense and frequent meltdowns, a full evaluation might be a good idea, to make sure that everything in her body and brain is working as it should be, and that she doesn't have any other problems or disorders that would contribute.

As badly as your sleep is disturbed, she really isn't getting any rest, either. That's not good for her development. She needs assistance.

I am very leery of labeling potential medical or behavioural problems as spiritual attacks. There's a lot of danger in that. It may be that a physical condition can be used against you spiritually, but ignoring the physical cause isn't going to improve anything.

[herbalwriter]

((((Natalia))))
I do think there can be spiritual components - not to clinical NTs necessarily, but this may not be exactly that. And even then, it never hurts to pray over your child! ;) Ds and I read in Isaiah about fear and how not to look anxiously about us because God will uphold us, and we prayed against the fear together. Ds said he put his fear in the trashcan and closed the lid. :giggle And I put him on the prayer chain at my church.

Oh, and we quit naps when ds was a little over 2 yo. :yes It's different for everyone. :hug2

Now, for physical help I have found a real herbal life-saver...at 2.5 it should be fine to give it, but that's jmo. ;) I brew some chamomile tea every night, and sweeten about 8 TBs of it with stevia. Then I divide it into 4 two-TB doses and put 10 drops of Valerian Poppy tincture (from Gaia Herbs) in each dose. I give him one dose every 20 minutes for the hour before bedtime, plus the "extra" dose right after reading stories. BIG big help. :yes He wakes some but not screaming.

[Singingmom]

My ds had night terrors until I stopped giving him soy. You might want to keep a food journal or consider eliminating some foods that commonly bother children, like dairy or gluten. If some nights are worse than others, the food journal could be useful in seeing what she had different that day.

[herbalwriter]

My ds had night terrors until I stopped giving him soy. You might want to keep a food journal or consider eliminating some foods that commonly bother children, like dairy or gluten. If some nights are worse than others, the food journal could be useful in seeing what she had different that day.

Oh yes, food allergies can be big culprits. ITA!