Yahoo Lifestyle My Child's Sleep Terrors Changed Who I Am as a Parent
The first time it happened, my 7-year-old son Milo (not his real name) and I had fallen asleep in my bed. Several hours later, I woke up to find him sitting upright, gesticulating wildly. “No, Mommy, we have to … we have to figure out where … we have to solve the … MOMMY!”
“What?” I asked, heart racing. “Calm down! What’s happening?”
Milo continued shouting, his voice breaking in distress. I kept waiting for him to finish one of his sentences, thinking that then, suddenly, everything would make sense. But he couldn’t. It was like he was trapped in his head, living something real, invisible and entirely impossible to express.
I got up and flicked on the bathroom light. I said his name over and over. Milo shouted, screamed, pleaded with me for help. But the more I tried to figure out what he needed, the more confused and incoherent he became.
Finally, convinced that nothing was physically wrong — no nosebleed, no vomit — I ordered firmly, “Lie down and go back to sleep!”
Miraculously, he did.
It took time and research to understand what was happening to my son: He was having sleep terrors, also known as night terrors. While they can look like vivid nightmares, they represent a different type of brain activity. Nightmares tend to happen closer to morning, during REM sleep. They can draw upon real life experiences, and they can often be remembered upon awakening.
Sleep terrors, on the other hand, happen earlier at night. They’re what pediatric neurologist Katelyn Bricker calls a “disorder of arousal,” in which children are half-awakened while in non-REM sleep. In some cases, this results in sleepwalking — in others, sleep terrors. Either way, children don’t remember these incidents the next day.
But, Bricker adds, “They can be really bizarre and kind of frightening for adults to see.”
This checked out. About a week after Milo’s first episode, he had another one. We were at a hotel that night, and I worried about scaring the entire hall while I tried to get Milo quiet. Coming home, we had a calm stretch — but then Milo got a new bed, and the first night he slept in it, he had the worst sleep terror yet. A haunted scream dragged me from sleep and sent me running into his room, where I found him in a state of panic. The more I tried to help, the worse his fear became.
“I think it’s a mistake to wake him up,” his dad said finally. “We’re making the nightmare real.”
I would learn later that this instinct was correct. In the moment, it took all my willpower to retreat to my bed while Milo screamed, “No, Mommy, no! Help me, Mommy — listen! NO, MOMMY!"
Every time this happened, Milo would eventually calm down on his own and go back to sleep. But my heart continued pounding long after he was quiet. The secret part of my distress was what it meant that in Milo’s panic, he began pleading with a mother who wouldn’t listen. What was she saying to him? Was she screaming, shouting? Walking away?
And my worst fear, my own private night terror: Was that mother me?
Milo had certainly heard me raise my voice, most often during his toddler and preschool years. But we had a close relationship — or so I’d thought. Now I was starting to doubt everything.
When Milo screamed at night, I began screaming silently, too, begging the mother in his mind to be patient. He’s a good boy, I pleaded. He just needs a minute. Hug him for me. Treat him well.
And the more those words echoed in my ears at night, the more I remembered them during daytime arguments. One evening, Milo had a meltdown over a screentime rule, an issue for which I usually had limited patience. Frustrated by his tears, I felt myself starting to react: to reiterate the rule, throw my hands up, walk away.
Then I heard, in his crying, something earnest: a need for support after a long day. I sat next to him. I rubbed his back. He wiped his tears and gradually became calm. After a few minutes, we decided to read a book. As we settled into the sofa, I felt a deep rush of relief. My son had needed me, and I had been there. After all those nights unable to help, this moment felt cathartic.
But I wondered if my impatience in prior moments had laid the foundation for the mother my son experienced at night. When he screamed, was it my fault?
According to the science, no. There is no evidence that sleep terrors are harmful, says Dr. Sujay Kansagra, a pediatric neurologist at Duke University. And there seems to be no correlation between real life and the content of children’s terrors. They are, in Kansagra’s words, a “complete fabrication from the brain that has nothing to do with daytime issues.”
The most important thing for parents to do, says Kansagra, is to keep children safe when they're sleepwalking or experiencing sleep terrors. This means locking windows and doors and using chimes or alarms as a warning that children are on the move. Aside from that, parents can provide physical comfort — pats on the back, gentle guiding back to bed — but should not expect children to wake up fully or respond.
Identifying triggers is also useful. Sleep deprivation is the most common trigger for these events, followed by sounds, lights or internal stimuli — like snoring or eczema — that could arouse children during their first hours of sleep. Sleeping in unfamiliar places can also trigger the episodes, which helps explain why Milo’s first few sleep terrors took place in my bed, a hotel room and a new bed of his own.
The only serious condition to rule out is seizures. If a child is moving in a repetitive jerking pattern, if their eyes are rolling upward, or if body parts are stiffening, it’s important to seek an evaluation from a neurologist. Otherwise, sleep terrors are common, harmless and usually pass by adolescence.
But that still doesn’t make them easy to witness. When I asked Dr. Brickley why she thought my son’s sleep terrors all involved his mother — and why that mother seemed to treat him so cruelly — she understood my consternation. “This is more of a personal answer,” she said. “I think it’s more that you are the person your son thinks about the most.
“Oh,” I said, suddenly blinking back tears.
Over the next few days, I reflected on the possibility that Milo calls out to me at night because he trusts me — not the opposite. The thought was deeply comforting.
But when I considered my renewed focus on parenting him kindly, I realized I didn’t want to let that go, even if it had nothing to do with his sleep terrors. If my son trusts me, I want to keep earning that trust. If he has to scream-argue with me at night, I want to know that our daytime hours offer a different example of love.
Maybe it’s more for me than for him — maybe I’m just desperate to extract some lesson from a bizarre unintelligible brain pattern — but when I’m breathing through my impatience and parenting Milo with kindness, I feel like I’m parenting both of us toward better versions of ourselves. Sometimes we yell, but usually we don’t. Even when it’s dark, the sun is coming. We’re scared now, but it will pass.
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