Children in Sleep Disorder: Victims of Sleep Terror

What Is Sleep Terror?-

For infants and toddlers, it is very natural for them to wake up in the middle of the night. Babies, who are under 12 months old, usually wake up two times during the night. And young children at ages between two and five experience the same symptoms five or six days a week; on a troubling night, they wake up one or two times. When toddlers become over five years old, 20 percent of them wake up once a day during sleep. However, parents usually don’t recognize the last pattern since young children go back to sleep within a short time.

Meanwhile, some of the young children start crying in a terror. The speed of their breath increases and some of them show cold perspiration. On average, one to three percent of young children under the age of eight experience these symptoms. Among children visiting child neuropsychiatry clinics, one percent shows the above symptoms.

In modern medical terms, these symptoms are called “night terrors.” This generally occurs to the children between the ages of one and eight, who don’t start going school yet. And, this symptom occurs most after two hours after young children fall asleep.

Are Night Terrors a Disease?-

In most of the cases, night terrors have nothing to do with disease. The symptom might be a good indicator that your infants are growing in a healthy condition. The young children between age one and eight experience the development of linguistic competence and thinking power that are accompanied by increasing imagination. This is why they sometimes mumble non-sensible utterances. They experience diverse dreams at night, too. Some people interpret night terrors with nightmares; young children cry in the terror after having nightmares.

However, sleep terrors also can be related to their increased stresses. Since some cases show that children experience a sleep terror right after they start attending prep-school and kindergarten, or when they got scolded by mom or a teacher.

Also, it can be caused by the lack of moisture inside the house or the blockage of their nostrils. Parents should check the humidity and temperature of the room in which young children sleep.

Saying, “My infant is not healthy enough, but weak,” some parents give restoratives to their young children. According to western medicine, however, this is not considered an efficacious countermeasure.

What Should Be Done?-

If the child does not show any abnormal symptoms during the day and does everything okay, it is better for parents to wait and see the progress. But if the child shows night terrors every night and the symptoms prolong over three weeks, he or she should be examined in a child neuropsychiatry clinic. Depending on the causes, doctors use medicines or psychotherapy.

Parents get perplexed when their young children cry hard, showing intense terrors. Although parents coddle them, they don’t easily stop crying. Rather they sometimes utter, “Mom, you are scary”; “Dad scolded me”; and “My teacher tries to hit me,” with a terrorized facial express