What Can You Do About Night Terrors?

Night terrors can be just as terrifying for the parents of small children and spouses, rooomates, friends, and lovers who observe them as they are for the unfortunates who have to endure them. Here are some suggestions both for night terror sufferers and those who care for them.

It helps to remember There are several things a night terror is not:

• A night terror is not a sign of mental illness, especially in children. (Adults with night terrors tend to have suffered traumatic stress.)
• A night terror is not proof of physical abuse.
• Night terrors usually are not caused by watching scary movies or listening to arguments, although these kinds of emotional stresses may cause insomnia.

And there are several ways to distinguish night terrors from other common sleep disturbances:

• Nightmares are remembered. Night terrors are not.
• In small children, nightmares usually occur between 4 and 6 am. Night terrors usually occur between 1 and 3 am.
• A child who has had a nightmare will respond to comforting. A child who has had a night terror usually will not.
• Nightmares occur during REM sleep. Night terrors occur during deep sleep.
• Seizures begin and end much more quickly (usually in less than 2 minutes) than either nightmares or night terrors (up to 30 minutes). Seizures can have an explosive onset and an equally abrupt offset.
• Nightmares usually are not associated with labored breathing or racing heart. Night terrors are usually associated with both labored breathing and racing heart.

If you have been told that you suffer night terrors:

1. Try to maintain a regular schedule for going to bed. Irregular sleep hours seem to increase the frequency of night terrors.

2. If you are an adult taking antidepressants or Lipitor to lower cholesterol, let your doctor know you have night terrors and ask about alternative medications. You should also let your physician know about night terrors if you take risperidone.

If you are observing someone else's night terror:

1. Speaking in comforting tones but keep your distance. Particularly in adults, touching someone during a night terror may provoke a defensive response. You can suffer injuries (bites, cuts, scratches, broken nose) from the sleeper without the sleeper's ever becoming aware you are there.

2. Don't burden small children with the knowledge they have night terrors unless they ask. Children can worry about having "bad dreams" and develop sleep disorders of other kinds. A night terror is not a nightmare. Nightmares are usually remembered. Night terrors in small children typically occur between 1 am and 3 am. Nightmares typically occur between 4 and 6 am.

3. Make sure toddlers and small children stay safe by avoiding bunk beds and by putting gates on staircases.

4. Consider a remedy from Traditional Chinese Medicine, cream of wheat with jujubes (dried jujubes are available in most larger markets). Although the original explanation of how the porridge worked was that it "protected the pores against wind spirits," modern science suggests that the combination of wheat and jujubes provides chemicals that reach the same receptor sites as endorphins in the brain.

And another approach that sometimes works with children who have become aware of night terrors is draw the night terror as a comic strip, adding a different, more pleasant ending in the last panel. This technique sometimes even helps adults.