Everyone has probably experienced a nightmare at some point in their life. As many know, nightmares are simply dreams that are bad or scary. Mostly young children get nightmares but it is not uncommon for adults or other people to have nightmares as well. There is also another less commonly known sort of “sleep terror.”
They are, most obviously, named night terrors for they are just that. They are not nightmares, another mistake someone might make. There are a few differences that can distinguish nightmares from night terrors. When you experience a nightmare, it is usually during dream, REM, sleep. Once your nightmare is over, you are usually fully awake and the nightmare is usually implanted in your brain.
Night terrors, on the other hand, are “sudden dramatic awakenings from deep sleep that affect about 3 in every 100 children,” (McPhee 56). Night terrors usually occur in children ages 3-5 and they are often outgrown by first grade. Now, just because they are more common in 3-5 year olds doesn’t mean that they don’t occur in children older or younger. Night terrors are most often experienced within two hours of having fallen asleep. Two hours into sleeping falls at the end of the first period of deep, delta, sleep of the night. Typically in a terror episode, the child sits upright in bed and may look sick, like sweaty and their skin may be very pastey. Although they may look wide awake, they are actually only awake to a degree. The child is not very easily awakened now.
The terrors are most often very short, but have, in some cases, lasted up to an hour or more. In the morning, the child almost always has little or no memory of what had happened the night before.
There are ways to stop night terrors if a child seems to be experiencing them daily. Some doctors advise that you wake the child up about the time they usually have the night terror and make them stay up for about five minutes and then allow them to go back to sleep. If you continue this for a few weeks, it should work, as it has been proven to in other cases.
But back to nightmares! If you or someone you know has been having nightmares, then there are a few things you should do. This was found in an article on http://www.dreamsnightmares.com. They said that if you tell yourself to fly away when the dream gets scary, then you won’t have to finish the rest of the dream. You will float above and realize you’re dreaming, and then “fly to a new dream.” I have tried this and it worked very well, unfortunately I got a little carried away, or should I say flown away, and began to fly out of every dream. But, I knew I was dreaming because I remember right before I began to fly, while I was flying, and right after very well. This was what one father told to his daughter who was about six or so. When it worked for her, she ran into her parent’s room, woke them up, and told them the good news, she was so excited! So, I tried it too and it worked very well.
So, that’s all you need to know about nightmares, night terrors and how to solve them. Sweet dreams to all!