at 4:30AM, waking the the baby, and the 5 yr old! he refuses to go back to sleep. just screams! my poor husband gets up w/ him so we can try to go back to sleep.. we are all so cranky! it is like his brain says it is time to wake up, always at the same time! anyone else have this problem? have any solutions? or reasons for this weird behavior? thanks
May be he gets most of his sleep during the days, I would probably cut down his nap hours. Someone told me that children should nap and up before 3pm. I watched once a video tape called SLEEP TIGHT by Dr. Jeffery Hull you can check it out from a library, he teaches parents step by step how to handle slleping problems my daughter who is 3 1/2 yrs.old gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, the thing is she never tells me she needs to use it she just either cries or hold it and sleep next to me
A lot of children begin to experience "night terrors" at this age. There doesn't have to be a reason. It just happens :?. Wishing I had some helpful advice........
Have you considered going in and pryaying over him and his room every night after he's asleep? We use to do that on a regular basis right before we went to bed because of bad dreams one was having.
My little one use to do that and we put soft I mean very soft music on low and left it on so there was the same noise all through the night. Also, we cut down on the naps and was up by 3 no later. A bath one hour before bed and nice bed time story. Might want to try that. It takes awhile doesn't happen over night.
If you are considering adding music to his routine, I would strongly suggest that you buy Sleep Sound In Jesus, by Michael Card, it is very nice. Our boys have gone to sleep w/it for 8 years now.
That is what I first thought of myself. My son had AWEFUL night terrors around this age and as a 1 year old. They usually happen at the end of a sleep cycle. Here are a few helpful hints: *When a child has a night terror, they are not awake, even if their eyes are wide open (I'm not kidding). *Yelling, talking, or consoling them will not do any good, as they are still asleep. I know it's hard to say that consoling them will not do anything, but if you understand what a night terror is, then it's easier to except and understand. You can console them, but it wont help them stop. *It's best to give them a few minutes of just crying and screaming. Leave them alone and eventually they will wake up on their own and calm down. That's just from my exerience, every child is different. *When a child wakes up after a night terror they have no recolection or memory of what happend. If you ask the child, "why were you crying", they usually will not be able to tell you. *Children do not have night terrors because of bad parenting, it is not a parents fault. It goes under the same category as sleep walking, there is no real reason, it just happens and is very common in small children. Adults even have night terrors. *Night Terror symptoms: Sudden awakening from sleep, persistent fear or terror that occurs at night, screaming, sweating, confusion, rapid heart rate, inability to explain what happened, usually no recall of "bad dreams" or nightmares, may have a vague sense of frightening images. Many people see spiders, snakes, animals or people in the room, are unable to fully awake, difficult to comfort, with no memory of the event on awakening the next day. *Night terrors sometimes run in families. *They are not dangerous and will not harm your child, but keep your child out of harms way, just like you would with someone who is having a seizure. *They can last 10-20 minutes. *They occur in stage 4 of the sleep cycle (so timing can be predictable). *Can happen at any age 6 months - 100 years old Sometimes my son would cry endlessly for 20 minutes or more. We had no idea what was going on until we found out about night terrors. He would be screaming one second, and the next he would suddenly stop out of the blue and have no idea what was going on. He does not have them anymore and he is almost 3 (next week). They occured for about 1 year total, but they would come and go. One week he would have them every day, the nexy week he wouldn't have a single one. HOWEVER, it was very predictable what time he would usually wake up. Music didn't help because he has always had music since he was a baby-still does. Routine may help if your child isn't use to a routine. Nothing helped my son because we were already doing everything that people gave us suggestions for, it was just something he had to grow out of. Hope this helps a bit .
So if a child wakes up on their own after, you can tell him to "go back to sleep", and he's willing to do it, since he has no memory of his terror? I am so thankful my kids never had these! It must be terrible to think there's NOTHING you can do!
It is EXTREMELY frustrating to deal with. I always consoled him anyway, even though it didn't help, because I felt so helpless and like a bad parent if I didn't at least try. They don't have memory of it, but they do wonder "why am I crying" when they awaken and know that something was wrong, they just don't know what. My son always went back to sleep easily, but if you think about it, they are so tired from crying for 20 minutes, who wouldn't want to go back to sleep? I hate to think of the even more extreme cases than my son. There are cases of violent night terrors as well. Glad he didn't have those!!!
I don't know if this will help. My nephew suffered with night terrors from about 3 until 6. It was so awful to see him go through it. One thing that his parents found was a trigger was any TV that had even the slightest violence in it - hitting, characters being mean, that sort of thing. They had to be very careful what he watched, as the violence could be so very slight, but yet enough to cause the terrors. He would go on in a night terror for as long as 2 hours. When they cut out most TV it helped alot. He didn't watch very much to begin with, but it was enough. I hope this helps, as maybe your child has something that is triggering the terrors. Hopefully this will pass soon.
Well, we have been through just about every bad sleep phase possible with our older dd, Ashley, who is now 11. However, we never went through the night terrors, but I did "go through them over the phone" with my best friend when her daughter was having them- she would call me so I could hear them, just so I would believe her! LOL Anyway, some of the things her daughter said and did while she was screaming were very scary! But, she's outgrown them now, and it's a phase that's behind them, just like all of Ashley's phases. I've posted on here before about Ashley's 3rd grade year- she was up until after midnight every night screaming and crying- but she couldn't ever put a reason for it in words. It was very frustrating. I certainly can relate to parents who are very tired- it makes your frustration so much greater when you're working on a lack of sleep! Just know that you're not alone! And, this too shall pass. Momof3- you just made me think of something- my daughter has been sleeping wonderful for at least a year now (apart from the fact that she has occassional nighttime seizures)- I was thinking that this could be attributed to the fact that we are homeschooling her again- but your comment about cutting back on tv made me realize that about the same time we got rid of cable tv, she started sleeping better! Wow- thanks for pointing that out!
This may sound strange but how is your marriage? Good, great, fair , poor? You dont have to answer on here publicly. The reason why I say this is b/c I was once at a parenting class and they were talking about sleep issues. They explained that alot of them are caused by insecurity in the child, or too much "child centered parenting" I know this sounds very strange but hear me out. They explained that a child intuitively knows that if something happens to one of his parents his world is going to fall apart. It may be that the parents are having trouble or it may be that he is never seeing the parents "connect" with each other even if there are no major problems. They also explained that sometimes the only time children see their parents together connecting is while they are in bed so they wake up at night. To remedy this they told the parents to have "couch time" THis is where when dad comes home instead of immediately picking up the children or reading playing etc with them he takes his wife and they go sit on the couch and talk for 15 min. The children are not allowed to interupt this time, but they should be in the same room playing on the floor or something. That way they can be witness to it. They said one parent told him his 5 yo never slept thru the night and they had been to all kinds of clinic and sleep dr's. nothing worked and he was a big sceptic that this would work The parent said he would "eat his shirt if this worked" They encouraged him to try it for a week. He did and when the group met the next week, they asked him how it went. THe guy stood up and started to take his shirt off! LOL Apparently after about 3 days she started sleeping thru the night and then continued to not have any more problems. I know it is far fetched but it is such an easy thing to try just thought I would let you know about it .. Good luck
I've never heard of that. I would think that one possibility would be stress, like the kind just mentioned. Don't we all get a little bit of insomnia when we are stressed? Kids can be no different. For my boy, it wasn't like how you just mentioned. However, he did get so much better when I left the childcare I was running and started staying home. He may have experienced stress from being away from home so much, but his early night terrors came from colic. My husband was on valium for the first year of his life he was so colicy. I was also a very colicy baby-it was pretty much a given we'd get stuck with a colicy baby!
