It happens every night..?

Question

My 4 year old sister always wakes up in the middle of the night becasue of a nightmare screaming and crying. This always happens not long after she falls asleep. I dont know what could be causing this. Any suggestions? Anyone going through the same thing? Help please!!

Normally they are about strange things. A little baby, some monsters, etc. She has a nightlight, so its not dark in the room.

Answer 1

Ask her if she remembers what is happening in those nightmares. You can also try a bedtime ritual with her. Start with warm milk which is relaxing, tell her a bedtime story (not a scary one), and let her pick a stuffed animal that's soft that can "protect" while she sleeps.

Answer 2

Some children are extremely sensitive to what they see and hear around them. At age 4, her imagination is really developing and she is not quite yet always able to determine between what is and what is not real. A lot of processing of the day goes on in your brain while you sleep. You are obviously an older sibling and she is probably spending quite a lot of time with you. Maybe she's listening to you and your friends talk, watching movies that you watch, listening to the music you listen to. What she is experiencing is nightmares and not night terrors, there is a difference between the 2. With night terrors, the child does not wake up although their eyes are usually open and will often seem "out of it" by trying to get up or thrashing uncontrollably. The child rarely remembers the next morning that they had the night terror or what frightened them nor can they tell you at the time of the night terror what is wrong with them. My now 9 year old daughter had night terrors from about 18 months old until just past when she turned 6. She also experienced nightmares. This is what worked for us with the nightmares: We didn't allow her to watch anything on TV except for commerical-free shows and kid's videos (the previews of upcoming shows are often just as scary as the show themselves). Her older siblings were 18, 15, and 12 when she was born so they each had to be cautious about the talk they had with their friends when she was with them and they couldn't listen to inappropriate music (for a child) when she was there. We developed a bedtime routine that involved bathtime, a snack, several stories (only happy, cheerful stories with nice pictures), a glass of milk, followed by prayers and then lullaby music on the cassette player and a couple minutes of backrubbing. It cut back on nightmares considerably, but she had to outgrow the night terrors. Your whole family will want to consider what she is hearing and seeing throughout the day from a 4 year olds perspective. What doesn't seem scary or confusing to you may be to her.

Answer 3

My step daughter has night terrors, We didnt learn about this until seeing a show like night line, She literally has bad dreams and cries or wakes up and runs around the house yelling and crying and throwing herself around. and she will not remember a thing! We have videotaped this too...It is very frightening at times, she will talk to you and everything, she has went to the bathroom, walked all over the house, threw her dolls, etc..

The doctors say the majority will stop when she was five and it will go away by age 8, shes 8 now ( last week) so we will see!

Heres some tips we found on the show:

Make sure she goes to bed very calmy, no getting in trouble and being sent to bed, this ALWAYS triggered it for us...She has to have a calm period between bedtime and sleep.....

Always keep the lights on...If she went to sleep scared this triggered it also...

Cant think of the others but these were our top 2!

( your might not be this drastic, but it still might be night terrors! )


PS. When she is going through this you cannot force herto wake up! this will scare her,,,,you have to coax her awake, Tell he what you did today, whats for breakfast, things like that, she will answer and then wake up and calm down...

Answer 4

How long has it been happening for? So many things are just stages. This is the age when dreams and nightmares start being a part of life for a child. The period of time just after someone falls asleep is the time when they are most prone to dreams. After that they go into deeper sleep - check it out in a sleep book, something by an expert. Basically just be comforting and reassuring, work with it, but don't encourage it. She should get it sorted out in time. It's pretty normal.

Answer 5

It could be either nightmares or night terrors. Nightmares are simply bad dreams. Things that she may be worried about in her life and things she may have seen can contribute to that. Night terrors are more serious, and more disturbing to the people around the child. With night terrors, the child usually does not remember the incident, and the parents are freaked out about it. With nightmares, the child wakes up, whereas with night terrors, the child is more in a state of sleep that would include sleep talking and sleep walking. My oldest daughter did this for a while... waking every night, about two hours after she'd fall asleep. It was night terrors. She would be absolutely inconsolable... she'd act as if you weren't even there, and recoil in horror if you got close or touched her. After about two weeks of this- every night- we went online and found out about night terrors. Everything they said was the same thing that was happening to my daughter. We tried one of the solutions- wake her up about half an hour before she would normally wake from the nightmare, get her out of bed to get a drink of water, go potty- anything that will get her awake for a few minutes. This broke the sleep cycle, and effectively stopped the night terrors completely. We did this for a few weeks to break the cycle, and then we no longer had to wake her in the middle of the night. Try this technique to break the sleep cycle. Good luck!

Answer 6

It could be night terrors, go online and look up night terrors and you can find the difference between a nightmare and a night terror. My 3 yr. old son was having Night terrors there for a while. On yahoo search I typed in night terrors and found a lot of websites that were a lot of help. I hope this helps.

Answer 7

How long has this been happening? It could be from something she is afraid of, a scary movie she saw. If it goes on for more than a week or more. I would suggest your parents get her some professional help. She could be having a mental problem that she can't express, but it comes out in her dreams. Because that is when our minds are at rest, and things we block out while awake, come out in our dreams.

Answer 8

I would talk to her doctor about this. We have a friend that if their son doesn't get a nap on a daily basis he has nightmares throughout the night.

Answer 9

TRY TAKING A CAN OF LYSOL OR SOMETHING. TAKE A PLAIN PIECE OF PAPER, MAKE IT COLORFUL AND LABEL IT "MONSTER SPRAY". HAVE HER SPRAY HER ROOM AT NIGHT. UNDER THE BED, CLOSET...............
SHE MIGHT FEEL A LITTLE AT EASE BEFORE SLEEPING IF SHE THINKS THE MONSTERS ARE GONE. GOOD LUCK

Answer 10

It could be that she watches something on tv that is making scared. Ask her and see what she says.