Night Terrors - Willow Springs,IL

It is developmental based.
Look it up online.

Actually, if you interrupt it, it does not help necessarily.

It is Involuntary.
They cannot help it.

But sometimes if overtired, it can make it worse.

Either that or he is having Night-Mares.
Night mares and Night Terrors are 2 different things.

Even from Night mares, a child will seem 'awake' but still be in sleepy mode.

Is he overtired?
Does he nap?
Overtired kids, actually do not sleep well nor fall asleep well.

My friend was able to solve her 3 year olds night terrors through a chiropractor who performed a type of energy balancing along with adjustment. This same practitioner helped my daughter with sensory integration and toe walking. Sounds crazy but she helped both of us. Unfortunately, she has moved away from Chicago but there are other wholistic healers in Chicago who specialize in children. You could ask for recommendations. Here is one of many articles on-line. Good luck - I think they are called night-terrors because they are so terrifiying for us parents ;-)

http://icpa4kids.org/Wellness-Articles/night-terrors.html

We do what you do. Every parent I have asked has said, "He'll outgrow it." No one had any advice....because I think there isn't much that can be done that you aren't all ready doing. I think this one is just totally out of our control.

*hugs*

Night terrors are rough! Hang in there! My son is 4 and he still has them occasionally. It usually happens when he is overtired. I know with my son that the best thing to do is just let him be. (I always make sure their isn't anything he could hurt himself on or fall off the bed) Usually if I try to talk to him or hold him it only makes it worse. Which Im sure it's difficult to do since he shares a room. I hope this helps alittle bit. Good Luck, it is definately a difficult thing to handle:(

We're still waiting for our 7 year old to outgrow them. He hasn't had one in a few months, so we're hoping maybe he's finished. He went through a six month stretch once before when he didn't have any night terrors, but then they started up again. We do what others here have mentioned. Try to be sure he doesn't get overtired, and be sure he doesn't hurt himself or others when he's having a night terror. There really isn't much you can do. For awhile our son was having them almost every night after he had been asleep for an hour and a half, so we started waking him just before that. It broke the cycle. That was very helpful. It only works if you see a pattern, though. I'm sorry your family is going through this. It makes you feel so helpless.

Prayer works in this house.

Definitely do a search on this site for night terrors, you'll see lots of posts on this topic. Highlights:
They do outgrow it, my son hasn't had one in a like a year, after a weekly occurance.
He had them more frequently when he was overtired, and they always started 1 hour and 15 minutes after he fell asleep. Basically, it's at the start of the REM cycle. Yours may vary, but chances are really good that they happen at the same time every night.
You can try to avoid them by waking him just before they should start (for us it was an hour in). A gentle greeting, enough to get him to open his eyes, maybe say hello back -- that's often enough to "restart" his cycles and fall asleep normally.
When they do happen -- all I did was very quietly shush him, tell him it's OK, go back to sleep, lay down, it's ok... over and over. He would scream and sit up and kick, often try to say something totally incoherent, and I'd just reassure him and tell him to go back to sleep. petting his hair, rubbing his back, sometimes OK, sometimes more agitating. Try not to take him out of bed if he's not actually waking her, it might make it easier for him to go back to sleep.
Good luck!

The only thing you can really do is hold them tightly until they ride it out.
Also to prevent these you can try documenting things like what he ate and what time he went to bed , if he had a nap , etc, then look for similarities in the days that he has them.
I noticed that my daughter has them if she is either overtired, or is getting sick.

My 4 yo is experiencing the same thing although its not to the extreme of a "night terror" rather I think they call it night awakenings - she does cry and kick during the night usually around 3 to 3.5hrs after she falls asleep. I am now reading a book by Dr Richard Ferber called "Solving your Childs Sleep Problems" and there is a whole chapter on night terrors and what you can do about them and maybe help prevent them. Basically he suggests to not wake them up or soothe them if they seem to be agitated by that (which my daughter even though she cried my name every time I would touch her she would pull away and cry even more) and just be in the room to make sure that your child doesnt hurt himself and wait until the episode is over and they fall back into a deep sleep. I bought the book off ebay for a buck.
Good luck - I know its a pretty terrifying, creepy thing. I thougth my daughter was possessed at first!!!

I can actually speak from personal experience. I am not sure if your son has been actually diagnosed with night terrors or is just having a nightmare and responding as such as a child does, but I experienced night terrors for two years from ages 20-22. This may or may not be the same thing that your son is experiencing.

Basically, what it feels like is that you wake up, you see everything around you as if you were looking around in bed, but you are paralyzed and you see some sort of being/ demon/ whatever fear you have coming to get you. You hear it outside, coming through the door and you even see it. You also literally feel like you are suffocating/ dying, etc. For me, this happened when I was completely exhausted in college during my senior year. After I graduated, moved to Chicago and lived in my own studio, I had an experience where I was mugged and then chased when walking home after dark. It started happening constantly then until I moved back to my parents house across the country. I even moved in with a roommate, which didn't help. After I moved back in with my parents, the night terrors never returned. I moved out on my own again about a year later and never had another problem then either.

For me, once I was diagnosed with having them (which you always remember), I learned to tell myself that this was a dream and that it wasn't real. With night terrors, you aren't fully asleep, but you also aren't fully awake. It tends to happen right after going to bed or right before waking up and also when you sleep on your back. For me, I was old enough to learn to tell myself that it wasn't real. Your three year old is too young for that I would imagine.

I think it is good that your son is sharing a room with his sister. Has there been anything that could potentially upset him or stress him out in his life? Also, does he sleep on his back? Could you try helping him to sleep on his side?

I hope this helps. I know that since he is so young, you can't just tell him to tell himself that it isn't real, but hopefully this is a start.

I found this website to be a good resource when I went through it: http://www.nightterrors.org