My Son Doesn’t Sleep Well, Does He Have Night Terrors Or Nightmares?

Does your child sleep poorly at night and you don’t know why? Does he wake up screaming or doesn’t he wake up but gets out of bed and looks like he’s having a nightmare? During sleep both adults and children go through different stages and may have nightmares or night terrors. But how to differentiate one from the other? It is important to know the difference in order to know how to treat them at the right time.

Night terrors are mysterious, unexplained disorders that happen when your child is in a deep sleep but not dreaming. This happens when your child suddenly starts crying or even gets out of bed. There’s a possibility that your eyes are open and it looks like you’re awake, but you’re actually sleeping (not aware of what’s going on around you).

Night terrors are not very common and only occur in a small percentage during childhood, only between 3% to 6% of children in the world. Although some children can also suffer from this condition at 18 months of age, most of them begin to experience these nocturnal problems around 4 or 5 years old, becoming a family problem when they become frequent.

Differentiate whether they are night terrors or nightmares

Even though they may seem like night terrors, on many occasions they are just nightmares. The two are actually quite different sleep problems. Nightmares happen during Rapid Eye Movement or the REM sleep phase, which is also when the child is dreaming. 

If your child has a nightmare, most likely he will remember exactly what he dreamed and what caused him fear (when he learns to speak and can comment on the case, of course)

Night terrors, on the other hand, occur outside of the REM sleep phase. A child may experience night terrors when they are in a transitional phase in sleep, it may last for seconds or several minutes. Because non-REM sleep is the deep stage of sleep, your child will not know what is happening and will not remember any images or sensations the next day because he is not in the dream phase.

What are the causes and symptoms of night terrors in young children?

Causes of night terrors

Your child’s night terrors can be caused by different reasons, some of which are:

• be sick or have a fever
• Stressful Life Events

• Not sleeping well or suffering from lack of sleep
• Anesthesia given for recent surgery
• Medicines that may have effects on the brain or central nervous system.

Signs That It’s Night Terrors

Night terrors are more common in preschool children. You can see that they usually occur during the deepest part of your child’s sleep, usually sometime near the beginning of the night. You can tell if your child is experiencing a night terror by looking out for the different signs:

• uncontrollable crying
• hit, scream or kick
• has a confused expression
• seems to fight
• Has shakes, yours, or breathes quickly
• You don’t recognize him even if his eyes are open

Night terrors can last for several minutes, longer episodes can last 45 minutes, although this is unusual. It is also likely that after the night terror, your child will go back to sleep peacefully, and when he wakes up in the morning he will not remember anything about what happened. On the other hand, if he has a nightmare, he will remember the disturbing dream and will most likely take a long time to go back to sleep, for fear of the nightmares.

In the case of nightmares, your child needs to feel that you are on his side and that everything was a dream, that it has passed. As for the night terrors, it’s important that you go to his aid, but not wanting to wake him up and, above all, taking out the things that can interfere with his movements to prevent him from hurting himself during this episode.