The Truth About Night Terrors

By Patricia Berry

The night Rosemarie Ciccarello of Dobb's Ferry, N.Y., heard screams coming from her daughter Lizzie's bedroom, her hair stood on end. "It was really eerie," says Ciccarello, who rushed to find Lizzie yelling "Mommy" in panic. But when she entered the room, Lizzie was not seeing her, even though the toddler's eyes were wide open. Ciccarello recognized the two-year-old's experience as a night terror because she'd just been reading about them in a parenting magazine. "I knew what it was and still it was really frightening," she says. The episode lasted about five minutes and then Lizzie relaxed in a deep sleep. The next morning, she remembered nothing about the episode.

Night terrors, which occur in up to three percent of young children, are one of the most terrifying events a parent can witness -- and yet they are virtually harmless, says Dr. Judith Owens, M.D., director of the Pediatrics Sleep Disorders Clinic at Hasbro Children's Hospital, in Providence, R.I. "They are far more disturbing for a parent to watch than for a child to experience," she says. "Night terrors are neither a sign of psychological trauma, nor are they the cause of psychological trauma."

Night terrors, which typically come on during the pre-school years, are different from nightmares. They occur in the deep sleep phase of the sleep cycle, usually during the first hour or two of sleep. A child having night terrors does not wake up, even though she appears to be awake. Her eyes may be open and she may be talking or screaming, but what she says may not make sense. She is, in fact, dreaming and probably won't remember anything about the event when she gets up the next day. Nightmares, on the other hand, take place during the lighter and later part of the sleep cycle. After having one, a toddler often will wake up and call for comforting. In all likelihood she will remember vivid details of the bad dream.

Doctors don't really know what causes night terrors, although illness, fever and sleep deprivation are known triggers for those patients who are prone to them. It's common for children who have night terrors to have a close relative who had them as well. That relative may also have a history of sleepwalking in adolescence, says Dr. Owens, a behavior that also happens during deep sleep. Sleepwalkers have no recollection of their wanderings the next morning. Both night terrors and sleepwalking tend to subside by the teen years, mainly because children usually sleep less deeply when they get older, explains Dr. Owens.

If night terrors become a regular event and a disruptive one, you can intervene by waking your child before the onset of an episode, say an hour after she falls asleep. After she goes back to sleep, it's likely to be too shallow a sleep for night terrors to occur again that night.

If you are concerned that there might an underlying issue triggering these episodes, you can always talk to your pediatrician. Almost certainly, the doctor will tell you there's nothing wrong with your toddler and that the best thing she can do is go to bed at a reasonable hour and try to get as good a night's sleep as possible.