J.,
3 out of 4 of my children had night terrors accompanied with sleep walking. It is unusuall for a child so young to have night terrors, but I am not an expert. If it is really a night terror, they are not awake. They are in the middle of REM(dream) sleep. My children had them for years and never remembered a single one.
With my daughter, I just had to send her to the bathroom and send her back to bed, she was rarely aggitated. My oldest son was extremely aggitated and there was almost nothing I could do to soothe him. I would send him back to bed and touch him on his arm or back and lay him back down when he sat up to get out of bed. If he stayed in bed, he didn't seem to be as upset. It helped my 3rd son to lie down in bed with me until the night terror went away. I would then put him back to bed. They all needed to go to the bathroom and we have had some really funny oops stories of me not getting them to the bathroom soon enough! Keeping a sense of humor when our kids do irritating things really helps.
The best solution for minimizing night terrors is regular and early bed time. Practically every time one of the kids stayed up late, they would have a night terror either that night or the next. I was dogmatic about bed time and rarely let them stay up late even on the weekends. My sons had night terrors until they were 12 or 13. My daughter's were much less severe and she stopped before she was 10.
An excellent book about children's sleep is "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child" by Marc Weissbluth. It is available at most major book stores, Target and Amazon. It will answer almost all of your sleep questions. He even breaks the chapters down by the childs age, so you only need to read a chapter at a time.
Remember, your daughter is deeply asleep, do not try and wake her and don't be distressed by her anxiety. In the morning, she won't remember a thing.
B.
