Night Terror
Filed under: Dharma, Knowledge
Night terror, recently I had a chance to observe this phenomenon, which I had never heard of or seen before. A friend’s ten month old son woke up from his sleep crying, there was this look of terror in his eyes, and there was nothing we could do to calm him down. Eventually he stopped, after a good 10 mintues of crying, but it was confusing and new to us. Later, we learned that what he had gone through was a night terror.
It seems, night terrors can occur in about 3% of children between ages of three and five, and sometimes in children as young as 9 months. There is not a lot of information out there on what really is scaring the children who experience night terror, other than information on what happens after the fact. From what I could find, a night terror occurs during deep sleep, which is different from a nightmare and occurs during a REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep.
What is puzzling to me is what does a ten month old child dream about or see, that causes them such terror and fear?, especially when an episode can last up to thirty minutes! Could they be seeing something from a past life? Or could it be images from a memory they inherited genetically from everyone who came before them? Or is it the creation of a mind still learning to paint a picture in the mind’s eye? We can only speculate on this, as there is no way to know what a ten month old child is dreaming when they experience a night terror.
10 Comments
Feb 28, 2006 | 10:02 pm
I guess thats where all the ‘boogeyman’ stories come from.
Mar 1, 2006 | 10:24 pm
Hi KarmaDude! A little off the point, but I just wanted to say your site looks terrific from when I first visited! Looking good!
Mar 1, 2006 | 11:10 pm
Thank you Alvin, now only if I can stop myself from constantly evolving it! It has been an exciting journey so far with this blog, and comments like yours provide the fuel to keep on going.
Mar 3, 2006 | 11:03 pm
Back to the topic -do only small children experience night terror? I remember some night mares that I had as a child very vividly, but I gather from your post that night terrors are different?
Weirdest thing is -google ads picked up on this story immediately! Now THAT is eerie!
Mar 4, 2006 | 12:23 pm
IJ, according to the medical encyclopedia:
I wonder if it’s a case of adults not reporting night terrors as frequently as it’s reported, in the case of children.
As a child, the only nightmare I can remember is that of falling. But recently I woke up from a dream where I thought I was dead, and it felt like I could not wake myself up for a long time. It was a strange dream, and I am not sure whether it was a nightmare or a night terror. It will be interesting to learn about nightmares or night terrors others remember from childhood.
As for google ads, they were starting to bother me, and your comment finally made me take them out, except the one on the individual post page. I feel they are a distraction for the readers.
Jan 6, 2008 | 1:43 pm
They have documented cases on children with night terrors and links to past lives… One case involves a 4 yr. that has night terrors and as his parents ask him Q’s while in this state (are you alright ?, are you hurt ? ) the child claims he was in ww2, it was this case that incuraged me to ask my child Q’s while in his night terrors.
My son has had these ( night terrors )his whole life, he is now thirteen and he claims he was in the hindenburg! he used to call it a blimp when he was younger( 6-7). The details came out the older he’s gotton… very twilight zoneish, I’m still doing research on this Michelle
Jan 31, 2008 | 6:41 pm
Hey Karmadude,
I used to have night terrors. They started at 6 days old. According to my mother I would scream for a full fifteen minutes every night at precisely midnight.
Mar 11, 2008 | 5:32 am
My son, aged 8, has had night terrors intermittently from when he was about 4. The difference between night terrors and nightmares is that they don’t remember anything the next day. My son, although he knows I am there for him, as I am quietly talking to him and trying to soothe him, is terrified and tries to silence me by putting his hand over my mouth and saying shush. He says the most disturbing things, but mostly it is not something we can understand. I am not certain he is not speaking in another language, but I am a bit doubtful. He has said, ‘it hurts’ and his last night terror he very disturbingly said, ‘just kill me’. I was stunned. It has made me even more convinced that it is something he has experienced in a past life.
May 21, 2008 | 5:47 am
I am curretnly 29 years old. I had night terrors regularly from a very early age (1 year) right up until I was about 13 or 14, by which time they were so often I was finally taken to a doctor by my mother. I quite often would never remember what had happened the night before but from my mothers descriptions it sounded l hellish for both of us. I can however, remember some of them and what I would see…with absolute terror. I recall being walked down our hall way to try and snap me out of it and seeing a group of rugged men at our kitchen table ripping meat off the bone and they were there as real as my mum holding my hand and evoked pure feelings of terror. I could write pages about these things as I’ve spent years wondering what they were all about. Occaisionally they would happen in the middle of the day in the split second of a blink of the eye….they seemed to come less and less and my last one was probably about 5 years ago now. But I too believe the whole past life thing could very well be a big part of it.
Night night.
Sep 5, 2008 | 5:18 am
What Ben wrote on March 11th corresponded the best with my son’s night terrors. It’s been happening almost every night now and my son is 11. He used to stay in bed but now he gets out of bed and will be standing, shaking, sweaty and mumbling a different language. You can’t understand anything except once in a while, while I’m trying to console him, he’ll say, “I love you, Mom.” He won’t let me touch him, and he’ll be rocking back and forth. It’s as though he is looking at something, wide-eyed, that just TERRIFIES him!
My husband thinks he’s a “freak” and will shout at him, turn on the lights as bright as they go, and nothing will wake him out of this horrible phase. He doesn’t remember anything after the fact.
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